Top 10 Lessons for I.T. Project Success
December 20,
2006
The key to project success is learning from what works as well as what doesn't work . Baseline has compiled a list of best practices drawn from nearly 230 case studies we've written in the last five years.
Lesson 1: Business processes should set the agenda, not technology.
Toyota Motor is on track to pass General Motors and soon become the world's
largest automotive manufacturer. Technology plays an important role in
See:
Lesson 2: Biting the bullet and migrating off an older technology can pay
off. R.L. Polk & Co., one of the largest providers of marketing data to
automakers, wanted to retire its expensive batch-oriented mainframe system. It spent $20 million to form a new
subsidiary that in 18 months developed a "data factory" built on a service-oriented
architecture and Intel-based servers. The project let the company cut the head
count of its data center operations group by 43%, and also saved money on
hardware and software.
See: SOA Case Study: How R.L. Polk Revved Its Data Engine http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1973583,00.asp
Lesson 3: Track projects across the entire enterprise. American
Family Life Assurance Co. (AFLAC) used to have dozens of technology projects
moving at once, but the company wasn't ever sure when
its 230 technologists would be done with an installation and free to start
something new. AFLAC set up a project management office and put software in
place that lets executives and project planners see who is assigned to which
projects, how many hours they have put in, how many hours are left and which
project they will work on next.
See: AFLAC: Duck Soup
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1642513,00.asp
Lesson 4: Get stakeholders in the same room. In five years, the
number of software applications used by Cirque du Soleil employees had ballooned from roughly 40 to more than
200. Although these tools ran a wide range of operations, they could not share
data. The company's goal was to organize all the application environments onto
a single, standardized platform for access and development. Getting all the
stakeholders in the same room to agree on the requirements was critical to the
project's success.
See: Cirque du Soleil:
Juggling Act http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1826548,00.asp
Lesson 5: Give customers what they want. Megachurches
like the 25,000-member World Changers of Atlanta can look at their data and
identify members, determine who contributes how much in donations, and track
who's becoming discontent and may abandon ship. With a well-trained staff and
the technology to track worshipper demographics and their shopping, prayer and
volunteerism behavior patterns, World Changers can target products and services
to its followers and keep its pews filled.
See: World Changers Church: Know Thy Customer
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1896787,00.asp
Lesson 6: Measure success—but also failure.
Technology managers at the Bank of New York thought they were doing a good
job of running its information systems, but they couldn't back up their assessment
with metrics. That's why they turned to the Information Technology
Infrastructure Library, or ITIL, a set of best practices guidelines for
managing technology.
See: How Bank of
Lesson 7: The easiest solution isn't always the best. Merrill Lynch
& Co reinvigorated 420 financial programs stored on mainframe computers.
How? By building—from scratch—Web services that can handle millions of
interactions a day. But unlike many other corporations that are embracing Web
services, Merrill decided to do it without the help of a traditional vendor of
Web services platforms. Instead, it chose to develop and implement an entirely
new Web services architecture on its own.
See: Merrill Lynch & Co.: Web Services, Millions of Transactions, All
Good http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1924587,00.asp
Lesson 8: Consider Master Data Management. Mentor Graphics, a maker
of electronic design automation systems, tried to manually bandage the problem
of incorrect and inconsistent data in its enterprise information systems. But
it was losing the fight. Then the company deployed a master data management
system to automatically update changes in its operations.
See: Master Data Management: How
Lesson 9: Make a lean system even leaner. Tom Mathis, vice president
of supply chain management at Danaher Sensors and Controls, had the job of
taking a "lean" organization and making it even leaner. So he bucked
corporate tradition when he proposed adding computerization to a manufacturing
process known for achieving efficiency without it.
See: Danaher Corp.: Leaner Machine http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1826554,00.asp
Lesson 10: Don't use complicated, expensive software when a clipboard and
pencil will do. Dollar General, the $8.6 billion discount retailer, can get
a new store up in eight days or fewer thanks to a super-efficient logistics
process honed each time it sets up one of its 8,000 stores. Key ingredients:
sweat equity and scant technology beyond PC cash registers on a satellite
system.
Dollar
General: 8 Days To Grow
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,1620068,00.asp
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2011734,00.asp