IT projects: It’s a team game

28 September 2010

IT projects have a knack of over-running for significant periods, requiring ‘out-of-scope’ changes half way through, and consequently going over budget.

Although any project will develop and evolve over time, such problems can be minimised through sensible project management methods.

It is not uncommon for IT projects to last several months, if not years, from conception to completion. With such a long time frame, it is not surprising that projects can sometimes lose focus, suffer set-backs, or simply go ‘off-the-boil’ should other priorities take precedence.

A common cause of such delays and over-runs occurs when key individuals leave the organisation or take extended absences. With nobody able to step in when a major stakeholder is away, the project is bound to stall.

These delays can often mean incurring previously unbudgeted legal and consultancy costs. However, these sorts of occurrences can often easily be overcome by taking some simple precautions at the outset.

Pick your team

For any project goal, or each part of the business impacted by the project, it is only logical that there will be a natural main stakeholder in the business. The goal may be a financial target or a functional requirement of the software to be developed, but it is essential that the goal(s) are identified early on and the key stakeholder in the business identified.

It is unlikely that a broad range of project goals can be effectively managed by one person. By identifying the project stakeholders and involving them at each stage of the project, it will help draw out possible problems sooner rather than later, and avoid the need to back-track or rework elements because something was missed the first time around.

Getting legal representation involved from the very beginning will also help to identify at an early stage possible areas of risk, as well as avoid the need to explain the history of the project when it comes to documenting the contractual arrangements. Ultimately, a small amount of cost in this respect early on can save a lot of time and money later in the project.

Write it down

By keeping a clear version controlled record of the project and progress – identifying the project goals, the important decisions, and the problems incurred – in the event a key stakeholder leaves the business or has an extended leave of absence, there will be a clear documented record of the current status of the project, together with all the salient project history, ready for the stakeholder’s replacement.

Keeping a high level record also helps everyone to keep on track and focus on the key issues, which is important in any project, but particularly in complex projects, for example, where there are multi-parties; multi-jurisdictions; a variety of solutions and/or service level matrices.

In high value or high risk projects, or projects running to a tight time frame, it would also be prudent to appoint a back-up in respect of each stakeholder, who should remain fully briefed of project progress to minimise any transition if the principle stakeholder needs to be replaced.

Who’s the boss?

One of the most common causes of delay or set backs occur when a decision is made without the necessary authority. In such instances, it is usually that a decision has been made by one stakeholder that doesn’t give the appropriate thought to another stakeholder’s priorities. The result being that the decision either has to be reversed or a work around achieved - either way resulting in delay and wasted costs.
An appropriate project team structure should be agreed and all parties should be clear of the decision making process. This should be clearly communicated both within the project team and with external advisors and contractors.

Conclusion

Much of the above is common sense, and an appropriate approach should be applied taking into account the scale, expense and complexity of the project. Although it is tempting to try and limit involvement of certain parties to keep cost down, such an approach will often lead to problems further down the line, and may end up costing you more.