IT Projects - It's Easy to Get it Wrong but what do you need to do to get it Right?

Experience shows us that when delivering an IT project it is easy to get it wrong (as the diagram to the above attempts to illustrate humorously). Customer expectations are often mismatched to the documented project scope and are often not grounded in what is possible or even probable.




One of the first key things for a Project Manager to do is to educate the customer on the Project Management Triangle. This simple graphic is intended to illustrate to customers the trade offs between Cost, Scope and Time. In theory and in practice there is always a trade off between all three. If the project scope increases then both the time and cost would likely need to increase. If the time is compressed with the scope staying the same then likely you would need additional resources and therefore the cost increases. As it's simplest level then Project Management is the science of effectively making these decisions and trade offs between Time, Cost and Scope and getting the customer to the end state that they desire.


Over the last several years Project Management has evolved from an Art Form to a Science. These days most successful project managers are certified/ trained on project management. I myself am one of 300,000 Project Management Professionals certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI). But there are other methodologies that are equally well developed (e.g. Prince II).



The improvement in Project Management Methodology has shown a definite impact in the perceived success of projects. For example a PMI study showed that the % of projects perceived as successful increased from 12% in 1994 to 36% in 2004. One of the top three factors listed as contributing to this increased success was improved project management methodology with defined processes and procedures. Many of the established project management methodologies have very well developed processes and procedures. The map to the left shows the processes and procedures covered by PMI. Having a certified project manager is no guarantee of success but following a well established methology whichever one you choose can only help.

But aside from the theoretical I think there are several practical things a Project Management and/ or Project Director can do to ensure that his or her project is successful. One of my more favourite authors (Paul C. Tinnirello) which publishes for PMI came out with his own secrets of success for Projects which I have adopted as my own. What follows then is his Nine Factors of project Success...

1. Senior Management Commitment - Make sure they are willing to do what it takes to get the project done. Clarify your limits up front
2. Adequate Project Funding - Have you had a healthy budgeting and scoping process?
3. Well Done Requirements & Specifications - Be clear on what it in-Scope. Scope drift is the single biggest cause of failure within projects
4. Comprehensive Project Plan - You'd be surprised the number of large scale IT projects that people attempt to management with a one page spreadsheet. The more detail the better
5. Commitment of Stakeholders - Make sure the business and IT want this project.
6. Project Status Reporting - Always over communicate. Tell people when you have a problem as early as possible.
7. Critical Risk Assessment - Understand the potential failure points in your project and plan preventative actions.
8. Project Contingency Plans - Understand what happens if you can't make your schedule or your budget. Practice the Project Management Triangle with your client
9. Willingness to stay the Course - Establish early a willingness to Stay the Course on the part of the business as there will be tough times.

So in conclusion if you want my advice around how to make an IT project successful then ...

• Educate the client on the Project Management Triangle;
• Make sure you have an experienced Project Manager that is Project Management Certified and uses a well established methodology; and
• Consider the Nine Factors of Success when setting up a project.

David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia.

Software Selection: Picking the Path to Success and avoiding the Landmines of Failure

Having sold and implemented as much software as I have and having been on both sides of the equation (buyer and vendor) there are a number of secrets to success and landmines of failure that I've seen along the way.

First based on experience with 80 plus ERP and CRM implementations I would say that a healthy software selection process includes all of the following...

1) Development of a Business Strategy. Understanding of what you want to get out of a solution and where you want the business to go. This should be crafted in your own image and not based on what a consultant tells you is best practice. Adopting your competitors best practice doesn't differentiate you in the market.

2) Business Process Re-engineering. If you are spending all the time and effort to put a new business system in you should really consider it as an opportunity to reevaluate your business processes and get some of those efficiencies. Again look to your own business and outside of your industry rather than to your competitors for the processes you want to adopt.

3) Develop a Solution Blueprint. By this point you are likely to have an idea of the technology you want to deploy. You should construct a high level blueprint of how you want your solution to work based on your business strategy and the business processes you want it to support.

4) Conduct a Proper Fit/Gap. Understand where the software you have selected can support your Solution Blueprint and where it can't. Identify early and up front what is configuration vs. customization. Understand the trade offs you may need to make.

5) Conduct a Scoping Assessment. Evaluate your options. Understand the trade offs between cost, scope and timing.

6) Build the Business Case and revisit often. Validate it with the business users and through benchmarks. Come back to it frequently and often. The Business Case is not just there to justify the project but it is there to determine whether you have achieved success and what success is.

At what point you engage your vendor or a consultancy in this process is up to you. My personal experience is that the earlier the better. It allows the vendors and or consultancies to better understand your needs up front and makes for a better marriage latter on.

The "Landmines of Failure" in a software selection are...

1) Lack of Business Engagement. Software projects sponsored by IT that are in search of a project sponsor rarely work.

2) Not Developing a Solution Blueprint. This is a critical step that people often leave out. It often leads to misscoped projects and frustrated vendors who chase around changing project goals and objectives.

3) Not relating the Solution Blueprint back to the Business Strategy. If you are not supporting the business strategic goals then why are doing the project in the first place.

4) Crystallizing existing Business Processes. I once worked on a project where the customer insisted on rebuilding the UI of the solution so that it looked identical to the previous solution. This cost them millions of dollars. As silly as it sounds companies often pay a lot of money and end up with what they had in the first place. Don't fall into this trap.

5) Adopting the Competitors Best Practices and/or changing your business to fit the Software. A friend of mine is a PhD for a University in Queensland. He did an analysis once that showed that the companies who are more successfully are the ones who look outside their industry and look to their own strategy for best practices not to their competitors. An example of this is a leading Financial Services Firm whom I worked with that adopted Lean Manufacturing as a way to reduce their operating costs by hundreds of millions. If they had looked to their competition they wouldn't have been as successful.

The "Path to Success" in a Software Selection Process...

1) Developing a Business Case. A restatement of the above. The best business cases are built by the business and validated against external benchmarks. They are revisited through out the project and worked into the goals for the IT department for the project. The contract with the vendor/ consultancy may actually incorporate the business case goals into the contract.

2) Hiring the right Consultancy. The consultancy needs to understand your business and the technology. Having one without the other usually doesn't work. Also just because they have a brand name or a previous relationship with you does not necessarily mean they will be successful.

3) Understand how the Software can support the business objectives without a wholesale rewrite. I've seen this quite a few times where a business goes through a software selection only to in the end rewrite much of the software package they've purchased. Either because they didn't know what they were buying or because they haven't done a good job of exploiting the software to it's full potential.

4) Recognise the relationship between Cost, Scope and Time. Referred to as the Iron Triangle in Project Management circles. Project Management Theory tells you that you can two of these three but not all three. Some sacrifices must be made. Make sure the business understand this and all the options and what they mean.

If you pick the right "Path to Success" and avoid the "Land mines of Failure" your software selection process can be a much happier one indeed.

Sales - Why the Worst Spot to Place in a Race is Second!

Why is the worst place to be in a race second?

That's because the person who placed second put in almost as much energy into the competition as the person who placed first but of course didn't win. All those who ran slower or didn't complete the loop hadn't invested as much effort or emotional capital or energy into the competition. So their lost was less.

This same logic applies to software sales or sales of any kind just as much as it applies to horse races. If you are the runner up, or the last to be qualified out by the client it means you spent the most energy, money and time but for no return. In a world of limited resources it would have been better to spend your time on other deals or sales pursuits. Particularly in the current world we live in with the economy falling down around us we don't have any time to waste.

Coming second in a race all the time is worst than not racing in the first place. Experienced sports star know this. That's why they will often opt out of competitions that they know they are not physically prepared for or can't win to save their energy for the next competition.

So the best thing to do is to qualify out of sales deals early if you can. Rather than fighting that uphill battle only to loose in the end.

There are several deal qualification tools you can use to help you with this but my personal favourite is PPVVC. Probably one of the worst acronyms I've seen. It stands for the following...

Power, Pain, Vision, Value, Control

Basically the methodology says you have to be able to ask and answer in the affirmative the following five questions in order to close any deal...

1) What high priority pain has the prospect admitted to you and what is it costing them today? Have they quantified this?

2) Who do you believe is the Power in the organization is and why? Can we gain access and influence with power in the organization?

3) What Vision did you create for the Prospect? Is vision differentiated toward us?

4) Has the prospect identified enough Value to compel them to move ahead now? Is there a compelling event to make them purchase?

5) Who is Controlling the buying process? Has the prospect agreed to your draft joint Evaluation Plan? If there a clear road map that you can influence?

The basic equation then becomes Sale = Power X Pain X Vision X Value X Control.

If any of the parts of the equation is zero then the answer is zero. In other words no sale. Perhaps it's an over simplification but if you think back to every deal you've lost (and if you are an experienced sales person you've lost a few) it will likely be because you've missed out on one of these five questions.

Obviously there is a lot more detail around this methodology than just five questions. But even thinking about these things as you begin a deal pursuit is a start. So next time you get ready to run a race think PPVVC. It may be time to head back to the stable!

Key Learnings for a Successful Services Practice

So after managing several consulting practices including one from start up and being 20 years in business and 10 years in consulting I think there are a number of key rules or guiding principles that one should apply if they want their services practice to be successful regardless of the services you sell (IT or Strategy/ BPR) ...

1) Pick your battles both in terms of the markets you play in and the deals you go after. Better to do fewer things well. Play to your strengths in terms of the verticals you work in and qualify early out of deals you know you can't win.

2) Decompose your budget. Understand how much pipeline coverage you will need and where you will get that pipeline from. As a rule pipeline comes from a combination of Demand Generations (Marketing) and/or Account and Territory Planning activities. But it is never 100% from one or another. Three to four times pipeline coverage is always preferred. If you can't generate the pipeline then you should seriously consider if your budget is realistic.

3) Focus on existing customers and make sure they are happy. It is always easier to on sell or up sell to existing customers where you have established the relationship and value proposition than selling into new customers.

Also it is a truism that at some point in the sales cycle the customer will be trying to minimize risk. One way to do this is provide references of previous customers. This reaffirms the need to keep your current customers happy and referenceable.

4) Make sure you have some strong proven sales expertise within the business. Sometimes the worst sales people are ex consultants because of their propensity to focus on the solutioning/ technical aspects of the deal. This doesn't mean that you should have good consulting and/or pre-sales expertise in your sales teams but you also need strong experience sales people who understand how to manage the sales process and customer relationships.

5) Augment and Cross Train your consulting team skills. If practice profitability is proportional to utilization then making sure your consultants have multiple skill sets that can be deployed on a variety of projects is the key to good utilization.

Clearly if you maintain multiple skills sets on your team it will help you with the up sell and on sell that I talked about in point #4. For example most customers who do an ERP or CRM implementation also need at some point BI or Portal work to be done subsequent. Often before the ERP or CRM implementation the customer will want to reevalute their strategy or business processes.

6) Utilize Variable Compensation Well. HR specialists will tell you that there are two reasons you to provide and employee with a variable compensation model. The first is to motivate staff to do what is right for the business. The second is to reduce labor costs during low periods. For example the billable consultant who has a bonus tied to his utilization will always look out for cross sell and up sell opportunities in accounts and make sure that he cross trains with new skills where ever possible. It will also encourage them to go that extra mile when supporting pre-sales.

However blindly following ones compensation plan may lead them to make the wrong decisions. Compensation plans that are too complex can make it hard for the employee to see the cause and effect of the behavious your are looking to solicit. So a compensation plan needs to simple, role specific and intelligent in it's design to be effective.

7) Consulting is about the people. Always hire for quality and experience. Your practice will need to be balanced between senior and more junior consultants to balance out your rates but at the end of the day people are "buying the consultant". Consequently it is important to have good quality people at all levels and often if can be good practice to over hire for a position. This might mean that because you are turning people away you might miss out on work if your team becomes over utlized but this is often preferable to hiring a consulting because you are over utilized only to find out that it is difficult to sell the person later on other projects for whatever reason.

May Issue of Manufacturing Monthly: Weathering the Storm: Manufacturing and Supply Chain during a Recession

Weathering the Storm:
Manufacturing and Supply during a Recession

“If size mattered, then Dinosaur’s would still rule the world.” Anonymous

Manufacturing companies have been dominating the headlines, from Pacific Brands massive job losses & share price plummet to Holden car manufacturers in union talks on reducing workers pay and hours. Both prove that just because you are big, doesn’t mean you are automatically immune from the current global economic crisis. Unlike previous recessions, which have typically been based on a ‘Boom and Bust’ cycle where excessive growth has led to higher interest rates and eventually reductions in output, the current global financial crisis has been created more by a lack of confidence in the system and thus is more psychological in nature. This means that tactics previously deployed to help weather the storm won’t be applicable.

Tom Peters, Business Management Practices says we all need to adjust our thinking, “Don’t think of our current economic crisis as a recession. Instead think of it as a recalibration. Everything is different now. If you think of it as a recession you may be tempted to ‘hunker down” and wait for the economy to cycle back. If you think of it as a recalibration, you will be motivated to focus on what you have to do differently, since everything is different now.”

Some companies will survive this recalibration or economic reset and some will not. Some will even thrive. The differentiator will be the strategy each company employs.

A strategy however, is not just about saving money and reducing costs, nor is it going back to what you were doing six months ago. What worked before won’t necessarily work now Blindly following what your competitors are doing under the guise of ‘best practice’ is also a recipe for disaster; more than ever you need to plan for flexibility and agility..

“Implementing the correct strategy for your business in this current recession has never been more important” says Dean Williams, Chief Executive Officer for WH Williams engineering. The company has recently conducted an internal audit of their processes and systems to put in place a strategy that will help them weather the global economic crisis.


Seven Rules for Success in a Recession

Rule#1: Understand your customers and develop a strategy for retention
· Know their financial situation and don’t be surprised by potential credit issues
· Develop a strategy and manage to it – better service, better price or both
· Consider some form of CRM Solution to manage customer interactions

Rule#2: Provide employees with the information they need to reduce costs and manage the business
· Provide employees will all the information to complete one job function on a single screen (Role Tailored Design)
· Enable employees to conduct searches for required business information in order to build their own reports

Rule#3: Manage and prioritise expenses to help with cash flow
· Set guidelines and policies around expenses in consideration of free cash flow
· Forecast your free cash flow 3 to 6 months out
· Provide your business with the tools needed to show complete visibility of the expenses being incurred and provide controls to ensure expenses are prioritised.

Rule#4: Be proactive and consider new opportunities to help your customers and suppliers
· Think “out of the box”
· Ask yourself the question “What new products and services will help my customers in these recessionary times?”
· How can you help your customers do more with less?

Rule#5: Use Business Intelligence effectively to improve your supply chain
· Use reporting and business intelligence to minimise the amount of inventory (and locked up cash) in your channel and reduce your inventory carrying costs
· Be quick to respond to demand signals indicating potential slow downs
· Understand the profitability of your product lines (do not be caught in the Standard Costing/Overhead Allocation trap)

Rule#6: Improve Collaboration
· Communicate quickly and accurately both internally and externally to be responsive to customers, reducing the probability of excess stock and incorrect orders.
· Reduce the time for demand signals to make it through your supply chain and automate the demand signals from your customers
· Reduce the costs and time associated with internal travel (utilise tools such as LiveMeeting, Unified Coms and Conf calls)

Rule#7: Build capacity through efficiency rather than real estate with a focus on:
· Materials and Requirements Planning (MRP) – ensure effective phase implementation of any MRP solution to provide the correct inputs and business processes are in place
· Distribution Resource Planning (DRP) – to reach deep in to the supply side and demand size of the equation
· Inventory Planning - Provide the right information when it is required

When WH Williams began their internal audit, they found that they needed to increase their order turnaround time to gain efficiencies but their disparate resource allocation and their billing and production systems hampered both their scheduling and administration needs. They chose to deploy Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0 system which they upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 in 2008.

“Through the deployment of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 we have significantly reduced downtime, and cut production lead time by 20 percent. This has resulted in us cutting administration costs by $200,000 and reduced despatch invoice times by three-quarters” stated Mr Williams. “We now have the tools in place to better understand our customers changing needs with a deeper overview in real-time of what is happening within our business allowing us to respond quickly and efficiently. With a flexible strategy in place we are now better placed to deal with the current global economic crises.