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During
the next three years, midsize businesses (MSBs) will
find themselves managing and depending on more IT
vendors, technologies and businesses. As a result,
IT project management roles and processes must become
more formalized and bolstered with improved tools
and methodologies. The key to success will hinge on
the ability to effectively build and manage project
teams in the traditional sense and continually ensure
that IT projects are aligned with business objectives.
In
2004, IT managers at MSBs must find ways to minimize
initial and ongoing failures associated with IT projects.
On average, MSBs cancel nearly 25 percent of their
IT projects, and more than half of them exceed the
expected cost of completed projects by 150 percent.
There is a critical need to strengthen the ability
to manage projects and the cost overruns and risks
associated with them. Focusing on measuring and managing
changing risk factors, and more effectively managing
vendors can do this.
MSBs
seeking success in projects related to IT infrastructure
and business applications could mitigate failure and
increase success rate by meeting the following objectives:
•
Aligning project management with business objectives.
MSBs should create and monitor a portfolio
of all IT initiatives in progress and proposed, and
prioritize them according to strategic business goals.
Each project should be evaluated at least quarterly
to determine whether to start, continue, alter or
stop the effort based on strategic objectives.
•
Ensuring risk management guidelines are in
place for every IT project.
Formal risk management plans are needed to understand
the factors that may disrupt an IT project and cause
it to fail. Planned corrective actions and responses
to different outcomes should also be included.
| Examples
of areas of risk include: |
• |
Business
diversity – the complexity of the company
and the project as it relates to it.
|
• |
Collaboration – the level of business
partner and customer interaction. |
• |
Degree of change – the scope of
the business transformation required given the
current corporate environment. |
• |
Organizational attentiveness –
the degree of executive sponsorship and resource
commitment. |
• |
Project management – the tools,
skills and methods used to manage project teams,
including external constituents. |
•
Putting skilled project teams and a communication
process in place.
A project cannot succeed if standards and
metrics are not set, timeframes established and the
interdependence of all IT components recognized. MSB
IT project managers must become particularly adept
at uniting a diverse group of people into a team,
while also becoming skilled at using and managing
external resources to fulfill those lacking internally.
Further,
effective and efficient communication can only exist
between the team members through a carefully developed
and dynamic communication plan. IT project managers
should develop simple but multi-layered communication
plans that highlight and consider the needs of detractors
and advocates by delivering communications at the
level of detail and frequency appropriate for each
affected group. Project communications include, but
should not be limited to such things as performance
reviews, variance analysis, risk analysis, earned
value analysis, project reports, project presentations
and lessons learned.
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Reference
Research Note
MSB Management Imperatives: Vendors, Contracts
and Risk
Published: October 6, 2003
Authors: R. Anderson and J. Browning, Gartner, Inc.
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