What Went Right?
This is about a case from the book of Kathy Schwalbe entitled, IT Project Management, where I would give some of my insights about it.
“Having specific deliverables and kill points at the end of project or product phases helps managers make better decisions about whether to proceed, redefine, or kill a project.”
Projects should be discuss thoroughly for managers to determine whether it is worth to continue and that it would not fail in the end, be reconsider or terminated.
“Improvement in IT project success rates reported by the Standish Group has been due in part to an increased ability to know when to cancel failing projects. Standish Group Chairman Jim Johnson made the following observation: “The real improvement that I saw was in our ability to — in the words of Thomas Edison — know when to stop beating a dead horse. … Edison’s key to success was that he failed fairly often; but as he said, he could recognize a dead horse before it started to smell. In information technology we ride dead horses — failing projects — a long time before we give up. But what we are seeing now is that we are able to get off them; able to reduce cost overrun and time overrun. That’s where the major impact came on the success rate.”
Knowing when to stop a project is an ability because it’s like thinking ahead of time on what will be the result, whether it will succeed or fail. However, failing often gives new opportunities for the project to point out the problems that could be hindrances for it to achieve success.
Projects in information technology are prolonged, even though it has no chance of gaining success, before stopping it. Realizing late that a project can no longer be save may result to waste of time, money and effort. But at least being acquainted that a project would fail is a big effect in acquiring success.
“Another example of the power of management oversight comes from Huntington Bancshares, Inc. This company, like many others, has an executive steering committee, a group of senior executives from various parts of the organization who regularly review important corporate projects and issues.”
Having executive steering committee is an asset to a company. Reviewing important corporate projects and issues are significant because the senior executives are collaborating their own ideas that result to improving of the projects and solving its issues.
“The Ohio-based, $26 billion bank holding company completed a year-long Web site redesign using XML technology to give its online customers access to real-time account information as well as other banking services. The CIO, Joe Gottron, said there were “four or five very intense moments” when the whole project was almost stopped due to its complexity. The executive steering committee met weekly to review the project’s progress and discuss work planned for the following week. Gottron said the meetings ensured that “if we were missing a beat on the project, no matter which company [was responsible], we were on top of it and adding additional resources to make up for it.”
Due to the complexity of the project, status may be emitted in each phase. So, it is important in having weekly meeting of executive steering committee for the management to review additional resources of solutions. Giving solutions to the problem is really hard, but when working on it together in a team, solutions will just come up easily because different ideas will be presented that would satisfy or fit in the issues.
“Managers in the motorcycle industry also understand the importance of overseeing their IT projects. For example, Harley-Davidson Motor Company used to focus only on producing and selling high-quality motorcycles. In 2003, however, management realized that it had to improve its IT operations and control to stay in business and adhere to new government laws, such as the accounting reporting regulations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Harley-Davidson had no standardized processes for user access, change management, or backup and recovery at that time. “Although complying with Sarbanes-Oxley was going to be a challenge, the company took strong action, utilized COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology) and passed Sarbanes-Oxley year one compliance. One of the major benefits of using COBIT as its overall internal control and compliance model was getting everyone — especially nontechnical motorcycle experts — revved up about control activities and why controls are important.”
Taking risks improves the projects capability — which also measures its durability — and reduces its limitations.
REFERENCE:
· Kathy Schwalbe, “Information Technology PROJECT MANAGEMENT”, 7ed; Cengage Learning
