I am back after a short absence. I am on a late flight to Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf, via Dubai. PMI's Arabian Gulf Chapter asked me to keynote their congress, which expects to draw some 1,000 PM professionals from the region. I am sure I'll have a lot to share later in the week.

You know, my delay in writing isn't because of a lack of things to talk about, particularly about the state of the global economy, and our profession. But the global economy is so dynamic and chaotic right now, it seems that one day's post is out the window by the morning of the next day. It is very unusual, but not so unusual that chaos hasn't reigned before. It happened in the early part of the millennium, in the late 1980s, and clearly the entire decade of the 70s. What we have to do is take as much from the past as possible and apply it... while being vigilant about today.

This brings up a comment to one of my posts by Patrick Moloney. Based on my post that referenced the CHAOS Chronicles, published by the Standish Group, his comment was:

"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."

OUCH! Yet, he is right. It is expensive for one person. I see the results of the CHAOS Chronicles, but only in summary form when it is released each time (every two years I believe). We then can compare results from the previous study. But it is a summary presentation that we see.

Membership with the Standish Group is necessary to be a part of all of their research. It is pricey, but it is intended as a corporate affiliation to allow companies to benefit from their research. However, if your company does not subscribe, there is still an alternative. For those of you interested in seeing the conclusions of the studies surrounding IT successes and failures, conducted by the Standish Group, I encourage you to check out the following book:

My Life is Failure: 100 Things You Should Know to be a Better Project Leader by Jim Johnson

My Life is Failure is a summation of over a decade of work on project failure in IT. However, it is applicable in many ways to all projects. The Standish Group has been collecting case information on real-life IT environments and software development projects since 1985. Standish's cumulative research encompasses 12 years of data on why projects succeed or fail, representing more than 50,000 completed IT projects.

Although it is written in an unusual manner, it is a solid reference about what works and what doesn't work in his database of IT projects. It reveals a lot of good information. I hate to bring it up here, but it is available on PMI.org, in the Marketplace. I am not trying to sell books, but rather help all of you benefit from the research. It is inexpensive.

Patrick thanks for making the point. More later!  

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:

1. Get better connectivity (agree wholeheartedly... too much variance in connectivity throughout the world)
2. More bandwidth (I am "all over that"... speed and more speed)
3. More research for new IT technology
4. 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)
5. 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:

1. Projects aligned to the strategy and strategic objectives.
2. Executive commitment and loyalty to those projects... real understanding and commitment... not only in fair weather.
3. And...yes, you guessed it... a disciplined PM approach.
4. 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.