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You Can’t Do That!
The other day I took a great proposal to the board:take $100,000 and bet it all on a horse at the track.Strangely, they weren’t in favor of my plan; they justdidn’t seem to understand that I had done quite abit of research and felt that this was a great way toincrease the bottom line.You’re probably thinking the same thing they were:“You can’t do that with corporate money!”But I say, what’s the difference between taking theR&D budget to the racetrack or committing it to anew initiative? Sure, risk managers conduct researchand analyses before launching a new project; they“make sure” it will succeed. But something’s notworking right because if you Google “IT projectfailure” you’ll quickly discover that the successrates in IT project management aren’t great. In fact,taking $100,000 to the racetrack might not seem socrazy after all.There has been much written about why so many ITprojects fail, and two main reasons keep showing upover and over: executive management and projectmanagement. That is pretty scary, especially whenyou’re the executive in charge of ensuring success!Fortunately, there are tried and true principles thatcan help you increase your project success rate andget you away from the racetrack. These principles—or keys—cover not only the management issuesthat are important to executives, but also issues of collaboration and integration that are important toyour team members.In this paper, we will explore project and portfoliomanagement (PPM), the three keys needed in anyPPM solution, and how these PPM keys will helpyour organization increase success along the projectlifecycle, from choosing the right projects all theway down to completing them successfully. Finally,I’ll discuss how @task, an on-demand project andportfolio management solution, seamlessly provideseach of the three keys that will help you bet big andwin in your organization.
Why Do IT Projects Fail?
The literature on IT project failure ratesoverwhelmingly points to poor PPM practices andinsufcient direction from executive management.Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene, in
How toKeep Your Boss From Sinking Your Project
(O’Reilly,2006), write, “The vast majority of [IT failures] aredue to bad decision-making, bad prioritization,and other stuff that your manager does before theproject is even assigned to you.” Eric Rosenfeld of Adaptive Consulting Partners writes, “Most failuresoriginate before the rst line of code has beenwritten.” And Paul Chin in “Cold Case: Why ProjectsFail” (http://www.itmanagement.earthweb.com/cio/article.php/2201981), states that “the lack of 
Three Keys of Project Success:
Betting Big and Winning
 
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support from senior management,” is one of theunderlying causes of IT project failure. Obviously,senior management is taking it on the chin when itcomes to the IT project failure blame game.But CIOs aren’t the only ones being targeted.Taimour Al Neimat, in “Why IT Projects Fail”(http://www.projectperfect.com.au/info_it_projects_fail.php), writes, “The most common causes for ITfailures are related to project management.” In fact,the UK Ofce of Government Commerce did a studythat shows one of the main reasons that projectsfail is “poor processes for identifying and managingrisks associated with the project” (another,interestingly enough, was “lack of clear executiveleadership”; see http://www.pm4girls.elizabeth-harrin.com/?p=185).Clearly, change is needed. The three keys of projectsuccess address that need for change.
The Three Keys of Project Success
Any PPM process or solution requires the meldingof three important keys: management, collaboration,and integration.Management is about the executives—theC-level decision makers who decide whichprojects best t into the organization’sstrategic goals. Management covers demandmanagement, capacity planning, portfoliomanagement, resource management,time management, cost management,scheduling, and auditing and compliance.Collaboration happens between projectmanagers and teams. Collaboration allowsproject managers and team members tooptimize project plans, gain continuousfeedback from projects, and use thatfeedback to improve business processes.Integration does not refer to people,but the integration of processes andtechnologies that support managementand collaboration.Most project and portfolio management processesfocus on one of two areas: management orcollaboration. Yet project and portfolio managementbest practices suggest all three keys be usedthroughout the project lifecycle: request, plan,reconcile, execute, and process improvement.
Management and the Project Lifecycle
Management is often targeted as the starting pointfor project failure. What are the best practicesfor management of project management?Management, which consists of the strategicdecision makers—the C-Level executives, the ProjectManagement Ofces—should be responsible forthe rst two steps of the project lifecycle: requestand plan. Executives determine which projects bestalign with the organization’s strategic goals andobjectives and then create plans for carrying themout. Within the realm of information technology,management is called up to manage projectrequests, or demands.
Request: Demand Management
In the information technology sector, CIOs areresponsible for handling new requests or demandson the IT team. IT consultant Michael Gentlehas said:
The Project Lifecycle:
1. Request2. Plan3. Reconcile4. Execute5. Process Improvement
 
COLLABORATION
 
MANAGEMENT
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INTEGRATION
 
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“Managing demand is unclear, and in theabsence of proper governance, it defaults toa business problem on the customer’s side.Projects are therefore usually approved basedmore on business sponsor inuence—orputting it less charitably, decibel management,or catering to those executives who shout theloudest—rather than on any rational decision-making process.”Current PPM best practices call for CIO’s to beginpracticing what is called “demand management.”Principal Analyst Craig Symons of ForresterResearch denes demand management as “anIT governance process that enables IT and thebusiness to optimize the investment in IT throughfact-based decisions.” In the most basic sense,demand management is managing the IT requeststhat come from throughout the company or fromcustomers in a way that is most strategic for theorganization as a whole.Michael Gentle, in his book
IT Success: Towards aNew Model for Information Technology
(Wiley, 2007),suggests that “in the real world [of IT], demand iscoming in every single day, so the challenge is tocapture that demand, both planned and unplanned,as early as possible, expose the high-level businessjustication and set up an ongoing dialoguebetween IT and its customers.”Therefore, rather than making decibel-drivendecisions, CIO’s should create a process forevaluating and analyzing project requests, andchoosing those innovative ideas that will leadthe organization in the most strategic direction.Ouimette, Sneider, and Loughlin of the InterUnityGroup call demand management a “critical factorin building efcient and effective organizations.”An appropriate evaluation and analysis processwill include recognizing potential benet to thecompany, cost, alignment with company objectives,and resource requirements. Those requests thatmeet each of these requirements can becomefuture projects.
Plan: Capacity Planning 
In the spirit of making data-driven and not decibel-driven decisions, CIOs and other executive leadersshould begin practicing capacity planning. Capacityplanning requires gathering data and determiningwhat proposed projects or investments best matchwith the organization’s strategic objectives andoptimizing those plans based on current demandsand available resources.Capacity planning is an essential practice amongexecutives because it ensures that the projectspinpointed for execution have all the necessaryresources behind them to guarantee their success.This, in turn, builds condence in executives’leadership abilities and team morale. (Seegure below.)
“The vast majority of [ITfailures] are due to baddecision making...andother stuff your managerdoes before the projectis even assigned to you.”
@task’s Capacity Planner is a quick and easy way to plan projects and foresee problems if an emergency project arises.
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