Project Failure
Pushing for the right IT project solution
In my last post, I talked about some of the reasons why large organizations often reject the best solutions for a troubled IT project: fear, pride, budget, and the ever-present internal politics. This week, as promised, I will talk about what it takes to champion the right solution. I can’t guarantee that you’ll succeed, but […]
Resistance to the right IT project solution
Over lunch some years back, Barry Glasco (a colleague) and I were reminiscing about corporate IT projects that we’d worked on as consultants over the years. Typically, these were large systems that were either having trouble being completed or were having serious problems once they were in production. Barry pointed out a self-defeating pitfall or […]
Distributed Development (Part I)
The idea of an IT project team spread out over a wide geographical area is an old one. It became practical in the late ’70s and early ’80s, with the advent of hard disk drives — instead of punched cards, paper tape or magnetic tape — for source-code file storage, wide-area networking (including the Internet), […]
The Many-Headed Beast on the Three-Legged Stool
Within a given organization — corporate or governmental — three separate groups exist that can determine the success or failure of your IT project. This is true whether you’re a senior IT project manager within that organization, a consulting firm developing or re-engineering a system for that organization or an external vendor trying to sell […]
Lies, Damned Lies, and Project Metrics (Part III)
[Here are links to Part I and Part II] In the prior two parts (links above), I covered the ideal qualities of metrics (informative and, preferably, predictive; objective; and automated), and why it’s so hard to come up with useful metrics for IT management. Let’s now talk about two concepts that may help you monitor […]