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First Aid for IT Project Failures

post by Chris Curran on July 20, 2009

I spent last week at Boy Scout Camp in Oklahoma. One of the benefits of attending a Scout camp as an adult is the great training opportunities available. This year, I was able to get Red Cross certifications in First Aid, Wilderness First Aid and CPR during the week - all very important when dealing with boys (and adults) in camps away from good cell phone signals.

As I sit here and take a break from sifting through a week’s worth of email, I was wondering what kind of first aid lessons could be applied to the management of IT. One of the questions I hear a lot is what role the CIO has in keeping projects out of trouble. This is especially challenging in large organizations where the CIO has several layers of management (a topic for another post!?)

The main text used in the wilderness first aid class is Mountaineering First Aid, a very comprehensive and practical guide. It outlines a list of contributing causes to mountaineering and climbing accidents:

Bad judgment using equipment:

Climbing unroped

Inadequate equipment/clothing

No hard hat

Placing no or inadequate protection

Performance/judgment error:

Exceeding abilities

Climbing alone

Party separated

Failing to follow directions

Environmental conditions:

Bad weather

Darkness

Falling rocks

Avalanche

Equipment failure:

Chock/nut pulled out

Inadequate belay

Applying First Aid Lessons to Projects

So, using this framework we can discuss analogous issues and considerations that a CIO could apply in planning and running projects.

Contributing Causes of Failure	Questions for a CIO
Bad Judgment Using Equipment	How do you build skills in project managers? Other project roles? Is there an apprenticeship program for junior project managers, implicit or explicit? How are frameworks and tools used on projects?
Performance/Judgment Error	How do you track skills for each IT staff member? How are assessments performed? How are individual skill levels used in determining project staffing?
Environmental Conditions	What external factors contribute to project issues and delays in your organization and industry? What mechanisms do you have to identify these factors and who is responsible? What happens when external factors impact a project?
Equipment Failure	How do you determine what technologies will be used for each project? How does your project team coordinate software updates, changes, and versioning with the infrastructure groups? Do you have someone assigned to each project responsible for maintaining all of the tools and software environments? How do you make sure your teams are abreast of relevant issues, bugs and updates to vendor products?

Most of these preventative ideas center on having the right people with the right skills and experience staffed to projects. I think that the biggest opportunity in most companies to address this is to create an explicit project staffing function that works with project sponsors and managers to understand the project details and with the various business and IT managers to match the roles to the individuals available.

I am looking forward to your comments and thoughts on this.

Update: Tweaked the CIO Questions to make them more open-ended, per a suggestion by Brunella Longo

Glenn Whitfield

Chris,

Nice comparison if IT project failure to mountaineering. This did get me to thinking - most CIOs realize the importance of proper planning and governance for IT projects, but may not have the resources to effectively govern these projects. An answer would be to curtail the number of projects, but business needs don’t allow for this. So the next step would be to add resources, but firms likely can’t afford this option. It then becomes a matter of risk management - determining those projects that need more attention than others. To properly do this, becomes a matter of communication with the business owners, and engaging the business in the management of the projects.

Of course, this then creates the discussion of who owns and should thus manage the project, IT or the “business” (I discuss this here: http://itbusinessalignment.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/it-project-or-business-project/ )

When it is truly “life or death” situation, resources and their cost don’t get questions, but when it’s not (as in most IT projects), many will cut corners, taking the chance the project will be successful - in mountaineering, they might say “you got lucky.”

Glenn Whitfield
Glenn Whitfield

Chris,

Nice comparison if IT project failure to mountaineering. This did get me to thinking - most CIOs realize the importance of proper planning and governance for IT projects, but may not have the resources to effectively govern these projects. An answer would be to curtail the number of projects, but business needs don’t allow for this. So the next step would be to add resources, but firms likely can’t afford this option. It then becomes a matter of risk management - determining those projects that need more attention than others. To properly do this, becomes a matter of communication with the business owners, and engaging the business in the management of the projects.

Of course, this then creates the discussion of who owns and should thus manage the project, IT or the “business” (I discuss this here: http://itbusinessalignment.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/it-project-or-business-project/ )

When it is truly “life or death” situation, resources and their cost don’t get questions, but when it’s not (as in most IT projects), many will cut corners, taking the chance the project will be successful - in mountaineering, they might say “you got lucky.”

Glenn Whitfield
Peter Kretzman

Nice post, Chris. As a former Scout, I can especially relate!

In my experience, the best way to cement these essentially preventative practices, all of which are quite sound, is to insist that Lessons Learned sessions be held on the heels of any project, successful or not. (Some call these post-mortems, but I prefer to accentuate the positive). Then, it is up to (especially) the CIO and his/her management chain to create appropriate processes, practices, and initiatives that will foster continuous improvement.

I just searched, and to my amazement I’ve never written a blog entry on the importance of “lessons learned” sessions. It’s now on the (long) list of posts to write at http://www.peterkretzman.com. So thanks for that nudge!
Peter Kretzman

Nice post, Chris. As a former Scout, I can especially relate!

In my experience, the best way to cement these essentially preventative practices, all of which are quite sound, is to insist that Lessons Learned sessions be held on the heels of any project, successful or not. (Some call these post-mortems, but I prefer to accentuate the positive). Then, it is up to (especially) the CIO and his/her management chain to create appropriate processes, practices, and initiatives that will foster continuous improvement.

I just searched, and to my amazement I’ve never written a blog entry on the importance of “lessons learned” sessions. It’s now on the (long) list of posts to write at http://www.peterkretzman.com. So thanks for that nudge!
Martha Young

Good post, Chris. Good analogy using Scouts (be prepared) as a launching point for project management, which also requires extensive preparation. I just wrapped up a book on project management for IT (ISBN-10: 158720259X
ISBN-13: 9781587202599), due out in October 2009, that has an entire chapter on saving failing projects and restoring failed projects. Content was built on extensive interviews with project managers at both large and small companies. Specific to your point a project management office used to centralize pjt mgt skills, mapping projects to business goals and objectives, and running the numbers to ensure cost:benefit ratios are used by the most rigorous firms.
Thanks for the post and sharing your thoughts.
Martha Young

Good post, Chris. Good analogy using Scouts (be prepared) as a launching point for project management, which also requires extensive preparation. I just wrapped up a book on project management for IT (ISBN-10: 158720259X
ISBN-13: 9781587202599), due out in October 2009, that has an entire chapter on saving failing projects and restoring failed projects. Content was built on extensive interviews with project managers at both large and small companies. Specific to your point a project management office used to centralize pjt mgt skills, mapping projects to business goals and objectives, and running the numbers to ensure cost:benefit ratios are used by the most rigorous firms.
Thanks for the post and sharing your thoughts.
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Renzie

This is very interesting! Keep up the good work and good luck!

First Aid for IT Project Failures

Applying First Aid Lessons to Projects

Contributing Causes of Failure

Questions for a CIO

Bad Judgment Using Equipment

Performance/Judgment Error

Environmental Conditions

Equipment Failure