Here’s something to go with your morning coffee:
IT budgets are shrinking, while performance and productivity demands are greater than ever.
The failure rate for IT projects averages 70%[1].
Outsourcing used to be “the answer” but now it’s the “question.”
Not great news.
These are the questions executive management needs IT departments to answer now:
- Which projects are performing to expectations? Is today’s positive ROI tomorrow’s NFV nightmare?
- Which projects are on time and in budget?
- Are they still in alignment with strategic business objectives?
- Which projects are at risk of failure and what are the potential trouble spots?
- Are project resources properly balanced and allocated?
If the answers to all of these questions are not available, IT management may not be getting the information and control needed in order to manage as effectively as possible. And that’s not good news either.
The pressure is on, the questions are real and the answers are not easy to find because they can change from week to week.
The ability to manage all projects as one unified, dynamic portfolio – instantly visualizing project performance, risk analysis and business alignment – is critical to any IT department’s success in today’s high-pressure business environment.
Can you tell the players without a Balanced Scorecard? A project can’t be fixed at its conclusion. But with continuous observation, measurement and timely intervention, many problems that are not evident at the outset during the initial planning phase can be identified and corrected while the project is in process.
Strategic Business Alignment Check
- Are your current projects going with the flow or fighting it? Customer and internal business needs can be fluid in today’s high-speed economy. Changing requirements can obsolete a project almost overnight. Your communications process must put you, your customers, your project sponsors and budget owners on the same track and make sure that your projects stay there.
Scope Check
- One of the most common causes of project failure is the “just one more thing” or “nice-to-have” feature that stretches resources, schedules and cost over the limit. Completing a project late with bloated scope can often mean that the operation is a success but the patient doesn’t survive. A project scope “diet plan” is often the only way to make sure that “just enough” is good enough and soon enough.
Project Metric Analysis & Implementation
- How do you measure success? You can’t wait until the project is nearing completion before you know how healthy it is. The best-planned projects undergo change. In fact, change is the only constant in many business and project environments. Explore the Six Sigma concepts – Design, Measure, Analyze, Inspect, Control – and integrate them into your project planning and management methodology.
Cross-project Resource Alignment Measurement
- Are your resources properly deployed? Obsolete resource management methodologies can idle some resources while others are over-committed. Scarce and costly IT resources should be made available as needed to all projects and not placed into dedicated departmental silos. A resource management plan is essential to portfolio management success.
Current and Future Cost Analysis
- Everything is negotiable. If budget contraction threatens your projects, how quickly can you identify lower-cost alternatives to key project elements while improving processing capacity, network performance and reducing architectural complexity and cost?
