How to Manage Your IT Project with PRINCE2

fall into 2 general categories (cause and effect)

– ‘people’ issues and

– ‘technology’ issues

– nothing wrong with either of these categories,  it’s just that the people (and their respective organizations) who are often impacted by the people issues can be more complex, and thus less tractable.  Issues are important, negative, and difficult but not insurmountable. As on a prince 2 Foundation London certification.

Positive and technological changes in business are often needed to try and remove issues, but more often than not must wait (sometimes for years) until the organization is finally ‘right’ with IT.

I work with people to manage people issues – typically

A business issue is anything that falls outside your  (r reused) performance objectives. These may include things like:

– Bills not getting done,

– People breaching company policies,

– People not doing what was expected of them,

– Quality issues not getting fixed,

– Recurring problems,

– Compliance issues,

Is- Anything else you are OK with and are depending on

You can probably think of a few more examples.  Imagine if you were to start all over for each of the current people issues in each of the above categories.

A successful project

A project is a temporary intervention to a specific problem.  Examples of a project include:

– A project that improves customer service, increase  efficiency, reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction,

– A project that saves money, reduce costs, improve performance, reduce errors,

– A project that is implemented, supported and maintained by management.

Surprisingly,

I find that many organizations still have their IT projects,

implementations, and such underway with significant issues that could have been identified with a project.  They end up much more expensive; create larger downfalls and hence,

create more return on investment (ROI) should they come to a real ‘cut your expenses’ event.

An example that comes to mind is a company’s new CRM (Client Relationship Management)  software system.

The side effect of anyone launching a CRM system is that it creates a ‘quite substantial’ risk on the company’s data assets.  The crash of any system can create a lot of problems for the company…    By not needing to ‘tweak’ the system, the benefits of the best company functionality can not be used.

This is a result of poor system architecture,  (which is the case for any system) and what creates the ill-defined problem, is putting too much business on this asset.

As part of the solution, the company must ensure that it has educated and empowered IT staff, places them on a project/process team, and runs the project with a centralized sample or integrated solution.   Using a 2 or 3 person ‘entity’ to design and build a project from scratch and change it as a direct consequence of their own real key function and operation is a big ask.   It is a lot like taking a transgressor ( migrate ) to get apple tablescapes purchased and installed on your iPad.

So, I ask the same of your IT department – who is in charge of the project?

What steps have you taken to transfer responsibility for the project to someone who is willing and capable of managing it effectively and virtually!?  Are you as lucky as Michael Dell and wanting to build a MacAir with a group of company loyalists?  It is not.

Minimize engagement-

This is of course related, but different.  The very human (or at least, artificial) involvement of all the parties who could conceivably be impacted by the project, is often the very dictator for the situation and the final number.  If you have to outsource anything, you certainly know the semantic issues.  

Most companies are 88% bogged down by politics and endless confirmations of ‘another company’s recommendation.  This can often end up in serious DCS deviations that have been known to be impossible to discover.

In many cases, this is due to an assumption that project management requires ‘linguistic consultants’ (and there is an assumption that this is the case),  which forces you to rely on experienced and well-trained individuals who may have a bushel full of credentials, but too little in the way of skills and experience.

 Pathilly – you actually are saying to your IT department, that they have wasted sufficient time, which is a classic case of ignorance that will harm you later immediately if you need to manage the issue on your own.  Even worse – as the ‘go-to people… if they are always saying ‘it’s just not going to work’, you WILL now!

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