Successful IT Project Delivery: Learning the Lessons of Project Failure

The aim of this book is to equip you with sufficient information to help ensure that your next IT project is a success. Real-life case studies will help identify the pitfalls and traps experienced from projects from which you can learn valuable lessons, whilst ‘best-practice’ techniques are identified throughout the lifecycle of the project to promote clarity and understanding. By the time you have reached the end of the book, you will know where the pitfalls lie in each stage of the project lifecycle, ‘early-warning’ symptoms of failure, and the corrective action that can be taken if necessary to ensure successful IT project delivery.

Of course, we live in the real world and no one book can guarantee to eradicate project failure. This book will guarantee that if you follow the advice within it, then your IT projects will have a greater chance of success. If they do fail, then you will know why they have failed and be all the wiser from it. Learning the lessons from failure is one of the first and most valuable steps in achieving success.

This book is not just another book concerning project management techniques; there are many good books available on the subject already. Poor project management is indeed a cause of many IT project failures, but it is not the only cause. Even with an experienced and accomplished project manager at the helm, there are numerous organizational, financial, political, and technical issues that can, and often do, affect the outcome of an IT project.

Readership

This book will appeal to a wide audience across the business and IT professions, anyone in fact who is involved in an IT project. People as opposed to technology are the key component of IT projects, and the overall success of the project is very much dependent upon the actions and decisions made by key individuals who have a vested interest in its outcome.

In large organizations, specific job titles will often dictate the role performed by an individual engaged on an IT project (such as project manager, technical architect, business analyst, business sponsor, business consultant). In smaller organizations, a more informal project structure will often necessitate a broader categorization of job titles. In such circumstances, it is likely that each project member will be expected to perform a number of different roles within the project, such as project manager/technical architect. The book therefore is aimed primarily at the following individuals.

As business sponsor you must commit funds for IT development projects. By approving funding you are empowering IT delivery agents to build and deploy systems that will satisfy stated business requirements. In return, you expect to be rewarded with measurable business benefits within the economic life of the project.

Whilst you are able to champion the project and steer it through the many hurdles and obstacles every project encounters, you may well suffer from a lack in awareness of basic IT methodologies and techniques.

This book will provide you with a clear understanding of an IT project, both from an IT perspective and a business perspective. It will enable you to understand your role in the project and how performing that role and the decisions taken as a result can ultimately affect the success of the project.

As a project manager you must deliver operational or strategic projects into the business community to an agreed timescale and cost. However, your success is often dependent upon, and ultimately judged by, individuals within the organ-ization who cannot always decide what they require and why.

As an IT project member, such as a business analyst, developer, architect, software tester, e-commerce specialist, or security consultant, you will play a key role in developing complex business systems that must satisfy the objectives of those business individuals who have commissioned it. An IT project can provide the opportunity to work with some of the latest products and technologies but, without the full support and co-operation of the business, it can become a stressful and unrewarding experience. Whilst achieving personal success within a project is often considered unimportant to the IT professional, it increases self-esteem and can often trigger an increase in salary and enhance career development. This book will help you understand the relationship between the business and IT stakeholders in the project and how the project team can work effectively to build upon that relationship.

More importantly, many of the topics within the book will be of prime importance to the IT professional, such as: key stages within the software development lifecycle and their relevance to the project lifecycle; the role of IS methodologies within the project; and key software development risks and how to avoid them.

In addition, there are two other key groups of individuals who will benefit from the book.

As an external business or IT consultant you may be required to identify and rectify problems your client may be experiencing on an IT project. The client will have high expectations of what you are able to achieve, and the onus will be on you to identify the most likely source of their problems and ensure that there is a clear owner for any actions required. This book will provide you with a firm understanding of the scope of an IT project and the most common causes of project failure.

More importantly, it will identify the roles and responsibilities of both the customer (the organization with the requirement) and the supplier (the organization tasked with satisfying that requirement).

As a user of the IT system you have an ongoing stake in its success. After all, the system was designed and built to cater for your business needs, not to further the careers of the IT professionals who designed and built it. Within the scope of your business activity, you may have already been let down by your IT supplier and felt helpless to do anything to correct the situation. This book will help you understand the role of the business within an IT project and how you can operate within that role to help ensure that future projects within your environment are successful.

The structure of the book

The four sections that provide the structure for the book reflect a logical cycle for achieving success. In order to plan for success, we must first identify and understand the reasons for failure. Having established our defence against failure, we can then start to build solid project foundations using the most appropriate tools and techniques. Throughout the whole project, quality standards must be identified and assured, up to and including business acceptance of the system. The software delivery cycle is then complete when one or more products are delivered into a user environment.

Part I Preparing the organization for IT projects

The initial chapter in this section highlights the worrying gap that exists between the perceived success of the IT industry — the need to build complex information systems to meet the growing demands of an information-dependent global society — and the disappointing reality of software delivery. Rather than delivering clear benefits through the effective use of IT, many IT projects are now abandoned as expensive disasters before implementation or fail to deliver any benefit once they have been implemented, at huge costs to the business.

Subsequent chapters highlight the key topics that provide the foundations for a successful IT project. Embarking upon an IT project is not a miraculous event that will suddenly and automatically transform an organization. The IT project is an enabler of change and must be aligned closely with the overall objectives of the organization. Managing change, capturing business requirements, and adopting a suitable project framework are fundamental activities that must be performed successfully if the project is to stand any chance of delivering real benefits into the organization.

Part II Planning for success

Planning is of paramount importance if the project is to overcome the many problems that are likely to be encountered throughout its duration. Activities such as program and project management, risk management, and configuration management therefore represent key topics within this section. The final chapter in this section should act as a strong reminder to those who are in danger of forgetting what the ultimate objective of an IT project is — to deliver measurable benefits into the organization.

Part III Design and development

A successful IT project is one built with the agreement, endorsement, and commitment of many people within the organization. As the project moves into the design and development phases, the role of the project stakeholders will become even more important as the project team will require their continued support and commitment to ensure that issues arising which affect the project are owned and resolved as soon as possible.

This section of the book identifies and discusses the techniques and methods necessary to establish acceptable quality standards and controls throughout the lifecycle of the project. Managing the systems development process is a key activity within the majority of IT projects; without software development, even the most sophisticated computer hardware is worthless. With this is mind, the failure of many software development processes to meet even the most basic quality standards is quite incredible.

Part IV Project implementation

The transition of the project from development of one or more products to the release of those products into a user environment signifies a critical phase within the project delivery lifecycle. The implementation phase of the project will be where the project team will be under the greatest pressure to deliver to plan — even when key issues still remain unresolved. The focus within this section is placed initially on the importance of testing within the project, followed by the need for the transition from testing to product release to take place in a controlled and safe manner.

The book concludes with the most important and long-term organizational need — to learn the lessons from IT project failure. A key difference between those people who enjoy repeatable project success and those for whom success is always a distant memory is in their response to failure. Those who learn nothing from it, either through arrogance or ignorance, continue to fail; those who succeed learn from failure and strive for better things.

Appendix 1

The Guide to Learning the Lessons from Project Failure. At each stage throughout the lifecycle of the project, clear and pragmatic advice is given on the potential problems that may be encountered during the project, early-warning symptoms of potential project failure conditions, and corrective action that should be taken to ensure that successful project delivery is not compromised.

Appendix 2

The Project Health Check. A checklist of key statements to test how successful your project is likely to be.

Glossary

All the key terms, expressions and abbreviations used within the book in one place for quick reference.

The case studies

The case studies scattered throughout the book will demonstrate just how easily IT projects can fail even if only a small number of critical success factors are not met. The case studies themselves have been chosen as they represent some of the most common faults identified in failing projects. The case studies analyse failed IT projects both in the public sector and the private sector although, due to legal restrictions, out of court settlements and ongoing litigation, it has been difficult to obtain information on IT failure within the private sector. Luckily there are still a few companies who regard the disclosure of information on projects that have not been a huge success as something positive from which we can all learn. There are not many, and in some cases the names of these organizations and the sources within them have been withheld for commercial and legal reasons. The practice of seeking legal redress for IT project failures and the reluctance to disclose any information which might be legally or commercially sensitive in itself highlights the problem many who seek to redress the balance of project failure face. It also helps explain why, after over 40 years of commercial computing, the rate of IT project failure has reduced little. The case studies will also demonstrate that failure is not limited to massive multi-million pound projects; a relatively small software development project can fail for exactly the same reasons as TAURUS, the London Stock Exchange trading system, did in 1988.

Whilst no one enjoys being associated with a failing project, understanding failure should be seen as an essential part of planning for success. Only from learning the lessons of failure can new methods of working be identified. Of course, this book is not the first publication to review IT failures but, whilst it is easy to discuss the many causes of project failure, it is much harder to identify what should be done to prevent such disasters from happening in the first place. This book, through the use of actual case study material combined with a comprehensive review of successful IT planning and development techniques, will provide you with the skills and confidence to help put that right.

David Yardley, May 2002