Back from a short holiday. It was great to rest up after a long year of outreach, advocacy and just plain work. It helps to be rejuvenated.
You may know that PMI has partnered with Forbes magazine to sponsor programs on innovation and leadership throughout the world. Because of the sponsorship, I read Forbes.com frequently, due to the interesting set of articles and information. Well, I just finished reading an article on Forbes.com and had to share it. Not because I am so pleased with it, but because I am dumbfounded by it.
The article is entitled Fixing IT (as in Information Technology) by Ed Sperling. I am usually provoked one way or the other by articles in Forbes; this time I am provoked in the wrong direction. The short story is the article states there should be five important things to have in your IT department to make is successful:
- Get better connectivity (agree wholeheartedly... too much variance in connectivity throughout the world)
- More bandwidth (I am "all over that"... speed and more speed)
- More research for new IT technology
- More "schemes" (could have used a better word!) for providing incentives to business to increase research and development, such as better tax breaks (better than leaving it up to the government to fix)
- More openness (he means better clarity on the "right things" to communicate)
These are all good, no doubt, to put on a company's "to do list" as he states in the article. However, I think he misses probably the most critical "fix" needed in IT... BETTER AND MORE PREDICTABLE RESULTS! All the bandwidth and connectivity in the world isn't going to give what you set out to develop... or satisfy customers. It is results!
I am surprised... no, stunned is more like it... that he would make a to-do list for fixing IT and would leave out the need for better and more predictable results; or that more CIOs (Chief Information Officer) and CTOs (Chief Technology Officer) need to consider more effective PM. Evidently he doesn't think there is any room for improvement. Maybe he hasn't read the CHAOS Chronicles, published by the Standish Group.
If you haven't read the CHAOS Chronicles, you should. It is an ongoing study of a random 15,000 IT projects around the world. The biannual study has been done since 1994 and exposed great insight into the causes for successes and failures of IT projects. The shocker was that in 1994, the percentage of projects that were successful was around 20%... yep, 1 in 5 were successful. The good news/bad news is that the latest study showed that the success rate is up to about 30%... almost (but not quite) 1 in 3.
That is a 50% increase but no gold ring! We still have much to do to increase the success rate and predictability of IT related projects. We do need more research, but we need it into finding the success formula. Well... the CHAOS Chronicles always points out the successful projects have a few things in common, like DISCIPLINED PROJECT MANAGEMENT, and disciplined executive sponsorship.
I believe Mr. Sperling should rethink his to-do list. These items should be on it:
- Projects aligned to the strategy and strategic objectives.
- Executive commitment and loyalty to those projects... real understanding and commitment... not only in fair weather.
- And...yes, you guessed it... a disciplined PM approach.
- Oh, and if we are going to do research, let's research what works... sort out by experiment Agile vs. Extreme vs. whatever works... then catalog and follow it.
More later.
Greg,
So glad to read your comments on the Forbes article, hoping the author will grasp what you have said. Congratultions on the association with Forbes, now PMI's voice will have a better chance of reaching those who don't appreciate the lack of success on IT projects, and why.
Jerry Mulenburg
At $5,000 I don't think I'll be reading the Standish Report. Perhaps in your position, on the PMI budget, that's not an issue.
Sir,
You have succinctly outlined my objection to the article. What a "Muppet News Flash". Mr. Sperling, if credentialed to discuss these matters, may want to go back to school. Interestingly, our sister discipline (Six Sigma) points out that companies also spend 40 percent of profits on failed projects by not utilizing tried and true PM methodologies. The simplified checklist presented is on every IT Manager and CIO's desk. I was an IT Manager for an emerging company 8 years ago and had the same checklist.
To seperate the chaff from the wheat, however, one has to adopt a paradygm shift in how companies approach business. I say thank God for writers like Mr. Sperling. They keep Project Managers and Six Sigma practitioners in business.
Businesses are upside down!
Each of the OPM3 ProductSuite assessments we have done shows the highest level of maturity in the project management space, followed by program management with the lowest level of maturity associated with portfolio management.
To an extent this is understandable, project management has been well documented since the 1980s (via the PMBOK® Guide and others), program management has been fairly well defined for probably 8 to 10 years, whereas project portfolio management has only really been differentiated in the last 5 or 6 years and there is still debate about precisely what is involved. The level of maturity in organisations would appear to track the time their people have had to absorb and internalise the ideas in the various standards, journal articles and books.
However, the value of mature and effective portfolio management to the success of an organisation is potentially far more significant than effective project or program delivery. If you are not working on the right ‘things’ in the first place, it does not matter how well they are delivered.
Project managers have been leading from the ‘bottom’ fighting senior management for the survival of their projects and for the resources needed to complete their work for far too long. The challenge for 2009 and beyond is to educate middle and senor managers in the value of proper project governance and effective Portfolio Management so that all of the people in their organisation know the projects being undertaken represent the best possible mix for long term growth and sustainability.
I completely concur with your thoughts in the last paragraph…… wouldn’t it be great to be a project manager in an organisation that adhered to your ideas and had a really mature portfolio management practice???
Happy New Year everyone.
Hi Greg
I am totally in agreement with you. After more than 2 decades on IT-Projects I myself could experience in the past all "mistakes" done by other projects that stressed the details rather than the foundamentals in order to succeed. As I discovered PMBOK and OPM3 6 months ago, I went in love with them. They are simply intuitiv. Managing projects with common sense is not far from the PMBOK principles and"guides". This is one of some reasons why we (me and my partners) developed a totally new "not very common" PMIS, focussing on the Essentials: managing HR, communications and quality. I would like to invite you to take a look on our homepage.
Best regards
Anouar