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Sep 08th
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| Successful Management of IT Infrastructure Projects |
| Written by David Rippon Director of ULCC | |||||||
Page 3 of 5 The project stages that I have found most relevant over the years are: Investigation This stage seeks to answer the question – WHY do we want this IT project. This is best done by ensuring that the answers to these simple questions are known: • What are the benefits? • What are the costs? • Who will be accountable for the delivery of those benefits? These are fundamental question that must be addressed very early in the project lifecycle. They must be discussed with the actual Users and the User Project Manager. This latter individual is the person actually responsible for delivering the benefits of the new IT system. The IT team cannot deliver those benefits as they will never use the system, they can only be measured on how cost effectively they perform the delivery process. If the project is to be successful then a User Project Manager must be appointed who will be accountable for the delivery of the agreed benefits arising from the installation of the new system. The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) uses the term ‘Senior Responsible Owner’ but the function of the individual is the same – to be responsible for the successful delivery of the benefits that can be obtained from the implementation of a new IT Infrastructure. If no one is appointed to this position then the risk of project failure is increased dramatically. Fundamentally Users MUST own the IT project. IT is a tool that Users can use to engineer positive change in their organisation. Users must take on a pivotal role in the management of the development and implementation processes. Many of the road blocks and risks inherent in an IT project can only be resolved by Users. Failure to recognise this is one of the commonest reasons for IT Infrastructure project failure. Analysis This stage seeks to answer the question WHAT do we want this IT project to deliver? This requires the classic data and functional analysis that is essential before the project scope can be totally finalised. Agreeing that project scope with all members of the project team (i.e. Users and IT staff) at this early stage in the project is a significant risk reduction step. Ownership of that project scope by the User Project Manager then becomes a critical factor for the eventual success of the project. The IT professional can propose how working practices could change to the benefit of an organisation – but it is only the User who can ultimately make that change happen, the IT professionals are only part of the team which creates the conditions to allow change to be implemented by the User Project Manager. It is probably the failure to take this responsibility within the user organisations which has led to many of the spectacular IT failures in the public sector over the years. The project delays in the new Child Support Agency IT system were almost certainly the result of lack of ownership by the User management of the objectives and scope of that new system. The key vendor, EDS, has been quoted as commenting: ‘The system is highly complex and more sophisticated than originally anticipated due to a change in Government requirements,’ Design This stage seeks to answer the question – HOW are we going to deliver the functionality of this IT project. Once the questions of why the project is required and what its scope are have been answered then the development of a cost effective technical design is the next stage in defining how the system will deliver the agreed functions. Once that design is complete then those projects which are needed to achieve the overall objective can be identified. Peer review, walkthroughs, of the software and hardware design are essential before the next stage, construction, commences. These reviews should involve all members of the project team and should be chaired by the User Project Manager. The cost of changing application software can be huge so it is advisable to invest as much resource into the design stage as possible to reduce the risk of producing software which either doesn’t work, or works too slowly to be usable or (the worst case) does not meet the project objectives. An example of failure in this context would be the complete failure of the Boo dot com web site to function at an acceptable speed when it was launched. This was a severe design failure. Construction This stage is the most expensive part of the project lifecycle as it incorporates the detailed specification, programming and testing of the new IT system. The project stages of Investigation, Analysis and Design will typically account for ca. 25% of the required manpower investment, this stage will probably account for 50% of the overall investment. The testing of the new software and systems in this project stage is fundamental to a smooth implementation and ongoing operation of the new systems. Unfortunately attempting to achieve project deadlines which have become unrealistic often leads to a reduction in the amount of testing that is performed. The complete failure of the Intelligent Finance web site for three whole days last October is a classic symptom of inadequate testing. Implementation This stage installs the new IT infrastructure for the Users. This is the stage of maximum change for the Users and incorporates such activities as physical infrastructure installation, User training, software configuration and deployment and the inevitable trouble shooting. This stage will consume some 20% of the total manpower cost of the project. Inadequate planning and execution of this phase can lead to significant operational problems as the reports of the Atkins fiasco from last year clearly shows. Audit This stage reviews the IT development lifecycle to determine what lessons can be learnt that can be applied to future projects. There will always be something new to learn. If you have been keeping up with the arithmetic you will realise that this stage will consume around 5% of the total manpower cost of the project. Unfortunately this project stage is very rarely performed as we seem to be totally unwilling to learn form our experiences in managing IT projects. The management of an IT infrastructure project in stages in this fashion seems to be eminently sensible best practice. However, the reality is that it requires the IT professional to manage user expectations down from the levels set by the IT marketing industry to a level of reality that most Users do not want to hear. Over the next few years I hope to be able to publish the results of research in this general area which will assist in setting user expectations at a realistic level. So far I have described a standard project lifecycle for IT Infrastructure projects and emphasised the key role that a User Project Manager must play for the project to be successful. Before closing I will also list what I believe are the 10 commandments of project management. I have recently been involved in preparing the response of the British Computer Society to the Home Office consultation paper on Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud and I presented a paper on the practical issues facing this implementation at a recent conference with the Home Secretary. I found it interesting that the consultation paper was proposing a solution which broke just about every one of the following commandments! |
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