Was Your Project a Success Or . . .

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Ross Holman

Project Balance Scorecard

Project Success

Just started or completed a project? How will you know if it was a success – met or exceeded expectations? Or how will you know if it was not a success – didn’t meet expectations or failed? Which stakeholders’ expectations are important? What can be improved to insure more success next time?

Did you know that most software development (SD) organizations do not have a process or commitment in place to even try to measure a project’s success, failure or areas for improvement? These are usually CMM Level 1 organizations, Chaotic. CMM Level 2 SD organizations, Repeatable, typically has a process that measures a projects success, or lack of, whether it was “On Schedule” and/or “On Budget”, but this measurement falls short of answering the questions above.

So what process and commitment is needed to answer all of the questions above. Many CMM Level 3-5 SD organizations have implemented Project Balanced Scorecards (PBSC) as the process and tool to give a ‘balanced’ view of project success, or not, and areas for improvement.

A good PBSC follows the guidelines of the Balanced Scorecard Institute and based on The Balanced Scorecard from Kaplan and Norton. The PBSC starts with identifying all key stakeholders for a project including:

1) Business stakeholders
2) IT Service Delivery, operations, stakeholders
3) Customers
4) Employees, project team

These stakeholders determine a project’s level of success and areas for improvement. Next is to develop criteria for each stakeholder’s focus on the project’s success. Major criteria categories and criteria might be:

1) Financial Focus – Business financial stakeholders

2) Service Delivery Focus – Operations and support stakeholders

3) Customer Focus – Business and external customer stakeholders

4) Employee Focus – Project team stakeholders

The above criteria contain quantitative and qualitative areas of focus to determine a project’s success – a balanced view.

For an example of a Project Balanced Scorecard, check out our web site at Palomino Consulting Group – Products

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“An ounce of prevention . . . “

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Ross Holman

Pound of Cure-Firefighting

Pound of Cure-Firefighting


“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” We all have heard this old saying - about being proactive versus reactive in life, at home or work. We need both concepts. When a crisis happens, we need the BEST people to react to the crisis, like firefighters, doctors, policemen, etc. They are invaluable in a crisis. But after the crisis, they all would tell you that preventing the crisis in the first place is more valuable and less costly than ‘firefighting’.

Yet many businesses and IT organizations ignore the benefits of being proactive, reverting to reactive processes and behaviors usually for the sake of ‘speed’. How many times has an IT team become totally reactive in implementing a project and then ‘fixing’ it after the fact. Yet they hope that being great firefighters will ‘reduce’ the impact on the business and its suppliers and customers. Some people even thrive on being a firefighter. They love the adrenalin rush and immediate satisfaction of ‘fixing’ a problem. Love them because they are needed in IT. But they are needed as a secondary process and behavior.

Being proactive means anticipating, acting and preventing a problem or crisis, or after the firefighting, taking the time to solve the ‘root cause’ of the problem or crisis so it never happens again. It may seem at the time that it is slowing a project, process or service, but if you look at the overall timeline it usually does not take longer. The benefits are reduced costs, improved quality and less negative impacts on employees, suppliers and customers. All are much more valuable than the best ‘firefighters’ in the world.

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Danger – Thin Ice

Posted on November 22, 2009 by Ross Holman
Risk

Risk

The high ‘failure’ rates of IT projects have been documented for over four decades by numerous studies and publications.  The Standish Group International reported in 2001 that around 23% of projects are failures, and 49% are ‘challenged’.  Doing the math indicates that only around 28% of IT projects meet their expectations.  My experience suggests one of the primary reasons for these continued poor results is the lack of formal, aggressive IT project complexity and risk assessment and management – a responsibility of the IT project sponsor and project manager.

Software development is a process – a process with varying degrees of complexity.  A process’s complexity, therefore, defines, qualitatively and quantitatively, the relative difficulty, time consumption, resource requirements and skill requirements necessary to successfully complete.  The more complex the process – the more difficult, time consuming, resources intensive and more experienced skills are required.  Many project managers use complexity and risk synonymously – but they are not.  Project risks are qualitative and quantitative issues or events which could lead to negative consequences.  Risks can be prevented, repaired if they become an issue or mitigated.  Complexity is not an event and is harder or impossible to prevent, repair or mitigate once the IT project begins.

So why do most IT sponsors and project managers do a lousy job of complexity and risk assessment and management?  A few reasons are:

  1. Lack of skills – training and/or experience
  2. Internal politics
  3. Lack of formal assessment and management process that is consistent and repeatable
  4. Lack of assessment, management and reporting tools
  5. Lack of emphasis in CMM, ITIL and other methodologies

 

What is the complexity of your current project?  What are the five major risk areas?

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The Weakest Link in IT

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Ross Holman
Weak Link

Weak Link

You LEAD people  -  manage things.  Don’t buy in?  Ever tried to manage your spouse  -  or your children??  Me too!  Yet to many the two concepts are the same.  Don’t get me wrong – leaders have to to both, but leading and managing are different.

That leads me to the weakest link in most IT organizations  – leadership.  IT organizations and  profession have not done enough to DEVELOP leadership skills and leaders.  They mostly focus on developing people to manage things – projects, systems, budgets, etc.  IT, therefore, is much better at managing things than leading people.  Most IT organizations do not have formal leadership training or mentoring.  Instead they promote good technical people and people that are good at managing things into leadership roles – and then see them struggle in their new roles.  IT’s colleagues in other parts of the business do a much better job of developing leadership skills and leaders, and have formal training and mentoring.

Check out my Web Sites Favorites page for other’s input on leaders and leadership at:  http://www.palominoconsultinggroup.com/favorites.html

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Drivers and Barriers in Establishing IT Business Alignment?

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Ross Holman

Before getting started with “how to” establish ITBA, the champion of the effort needs to understand certain conditions exist inside organizations that are drivers or barriers for ITBA.  Think of drivers as conditions that make it easier, but not impossible if absent, for ITBA.  Barriers are conditions that may prevent ITBA or make it more difficult.  These evaluations will be helpful in determining a strategy for success. The most important are:

Drivers

  1. Business executives and leaders understand and support IT
  2. IT executives and leaders understand the business – strategy/model, processes, etc.
  3. ITBA a priority for business executives and IT executives
  4. IT executives participate in developing business strategy, model, goals, etc
  5. Individual business and IT MBO incentives support ITBA
  6. IT demonstrates leadership depth and breadth
  7. IT has a track record of delivering on commitments
  8. Active process to measure ITBA

Barriers

  1. Business units and departments are not well aligned
  2. Business and IT executives and leaders do not trust each other
  3. Business and/or IT culture and decision making highly political
  4. IT organization relegated to a ‘vendor’ instead of a business partner
  5. Lack of consistent and repeatable project portfolio management process
  6. Lack of consistent and repeatable project governance process
  7. Lack of consistent and repeatable service level agreement process
  8. Poor or no definition of ITBA

It is imperative for IT executives and leaders to understand which drivers and barriers exist.  Periodically, they need to honestly evaluate drivers and barriers for each business unit, department, etc. that needs a high degree of ITBA.  They must take actions to create and continuously improve drivers.  For barriers, take actions to eliminate or continuously mitigate.

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Over Provisioning of IT Assets

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Ross Holman

Money Tree

Money Tree

Do you know IT’s typical utilization of hardware (workstations, servers, storage, and network), software, and facilities in “lights on” operations and maintenance is ridiculously low!!  Millions of servers run at less than 12% of capacity.  Storage is utilized at less than 30% of capacity.  What a HUGE waste of money.  Why do IT organizations run such low utilization?  Mostly to CYA – Scope 2, Buy 3.  Other parts of the business avoid these costs.  For example: 

1)    Would a COO spend $30 million on about a 100K square foot distribution center if during the life of that facility they would use only 15-30% of the total floor space?

2)    Would an airline CEO buy a $20-30 million passenger jet if the average load factor during its life was going to be 15% and at peak occasionally 40%?

3)    Would any executive hire 5 new, permanent employees to do a total of 40 hours of work per week instead of just one person?

NO, if they plan on having a job – or a company!  Yet this mass under utilization – or over provisioning – of IT assets has occurred for at least 2 decades and is not getting much better.  Plus most CIOs do not know the utilization of their IT physical assets, including me for most of my career. 

Let’s look at a real life example based on total cost of ownership (TCO) for a server.  A CIO that buys a mid-level enterprise server for around $50K in acquisition costs will pay a 3 year TCO of over $250K, assuming the acquisition cost is 20% of the TCO.  These TCO ratios can vary but are backed up by published research from several IT research groups.  But the “relative” TCO of that server is over $800K, if it is utilized at only 15% of its capacity.  Now multiply this actual or relative TCO by the “hundreds” or “thousands” of servers a large company has in its data center(s).  These costs are not soft costs.

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Building Trust in IT

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Ross Holman
Trust

Trust

 “I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him”.  Everyone has heard/said that phrase.  So how important is TRUST for IT professionals and organizations.  Consider this. “With high trust, success comes faster, better and at a lower cost” says David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue.  What IT organization does not want to be successful – faster, better, and cheaper – and I would say much less stressful?

I have worked in all environments – low, moderate and high trust.  So when I became a CIO I knew an important Habit of Excellence I need to build and cultivate was trust within IT, and between IT and other business leaders and organizations.  But how does one go about building trust and establishing it as a Habit? In the 90’s and was introduced to the writings and teachings of Stephen R. Covey and his son Stephen R.M. Covey.  Both have written, taught and consulted on the topic of trust.  And I have used their concepts and adapted them to my personal and work lives with much success.  Many of my thoughts below are elaborations and adaptations of their writings.

Trust is not just a touchy, feely concept.  Consider this definition of trust from the Covey’s:

TRUST = One’s Character + Ones’ Competency

Trust between people is a combination of a person’s:

  •        Character – What you say/do, How you say/do, and  Why you say/do
  •        Competency -  What you can do, What you do and What results you get

So why is competency required to build trust?  I thought you just needed to be a ‘good person’ – high character.  Let’s look at a doctor/patient relationship.  As a patient needing open heart surgery, would you trust a doctor that had good bed side manners and high personal integrity, but was in their first year as a cardiologist, and had never performed open heart surgery?  Partially, but I was the patient, I want someone more accomplished to do the surgery.

 People build trust by building ‘wealth’ in what the Covey’s call an ‘Emotional Bank Account’.  As with any bank account one can add to the account with deposits and reduce the account with withdrawals.  Here are just a few examples of deposits and withdrawals with IT professionals and organizations.

Character

  •        Deposits – Think Straight, Talk Straight; Listens to Understand; Manages Expectations; Works to Right Wrongs; Puts Employees First, Then Customers, Then Stockholders; Promotes Win/Win Decisions
  •        Withdrawals -  Shows Disrespect; Listens to Respond; Not Trusting; Talks Behind People’s Backs; Avoids Conflict; Talks the Talk, Does Not Walk the Walk; Being Intolerant/Inflexible

Competency

  •        Deposits – Keep Commitments and Delivers Results; Manages Risks; Solves Root Cause of  Problems; Promotes Continuous Improvements; Admit When Wrong or Do Not Know; Demonstrates Leadership
  •        Withdrawals -  Does Not Hold People Accountable; Makes Excuses-Blaming Others; Does Not Take Responsibility; Sells Poor Ideas; Does Not Understand the Business; Does Not Measure Success; Is Reactive versus Proactive; Does Not Align with Business

So how can you objectively measure your EBA with colleagues? I use the Trust Quotient:

TQ = EBA Deposits / (EBA Withdrawals * 2.75)

That’s right – withdrawals are more expensive than a single deposit.  So you need 3 deposits to make up for a single withdrawal.

So what are your experiences in building Trust???

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