EVOLUTION OF BPR

Musing on Study of Project failures

Posted on the April 27th, 2009 under Business Risk, Enterprise Software, Organizational Transformation by Gregory Yankelovich

The British Computer Society Project management website published a well researched study in project failures by Dr. John McManus and Dr. Trevor Wood-Harper.

Research highlights that only one in eight information technology projects can be considered truly successful (failure being described as those projects that do not meet the original time, cost and (quality) requirements criteria).

The study covered 214 information system projects between 1998 and 2005 across European Union and various industries from manufacturing (43 projects) and retail (36) to logistics (9) and agriculture (6). The largest group of projects (40.65%) is quite large in budgetary size (10-20 millions EUR).

 

Prior research by the authors in 2002 identified that 7 out of 10 software projects undertaken in the UK adopted the waterfall method for software development and delivery. Results from the analysis of cases indicates that almost one in four of the projects examined were abandoned after the feasibility stage of those projects completed approximately one in three were schedule and budget overruns.

It is unfortunate that the latest study did not look at a split between waterfall and Agile methodologies applied in these projects, and whether there was any solid trend in terms of success and failures depending on the methodology choice.

I also wonder if a number of projects completed (76.2%) is inflated as the study did not follow through with measuring user adoption without which no ROI is not achieved. That very fact underscores, in my opinion, the very reason why IS project failures are so prevalent – these projects should not be led by enablers (IS), but by process owners who should be responsible for holistic approach to organizational transformation.

Key reasons why projects get canceled

• Business reasons for project failure
• Business strategy superseded;
• Business processes change (poor alignment);
• Poor requirements management;
• Business benefits not clearly communicated or overstated;
• Failure of parent company to deliver;
• Governance issues within the contract;
• Higher cost of capital;
• Inability to provide investment capital;
• Inappropriate disaster recovery;
• Misuse of financial resources;
• Overspends in excess of agreed budgets;
• Poor project board composition;
• Take-over of client firm;
• Too big a project portfolio.

Management reasons

• Ability to adapt to new resource combinations;
• Differences between management and client;
• Insufficient risk management;
• Insufficient end-user management;
• Insufficient domain knowledge;
• Insufficient software metrics;
• Insufficient training of users;
• Inappropriate procedures and routines;
• Lack of management judgement;
• Lack of software development metrics;
• Loss of key personnel;
• Managing legacy replacement;
• Poor vendor management
• Poor software productivity;
• Poor communication between stakeholders;
• Poor contract management;
• Poor financial management;
• Project management capability;
• Poor delegation and decision making;
• Unfilled promises to users and other stakeholders.

Technical reasons

• Inappropriate architecture;
• Insufficient reuse of existing technical objects;
• Inappropriate testing tools;
• Inappropriate coding language;
• Inappropriate technical methodologies;
• Lack of formal technical standards;
• Lack of technical innovation (obsolescence);
• Misstatement of technical risk;
• Obsolescence of technology;
• Poor interface specifications;
• Poor quality code;
• Poor systems testing;
• Poor data migration;
• Poor systems integration;
• Poor configuration management;
• Poor change management procedures;
• Poor technical judgement.

The bolding is mine. let me know in comments what you think.

I hate to sound like Andy Rooney…

Posted on the April 25th, 2009 under Just ranting, Uncategorized by CarolW

You know what really chaps my hide? When I go to do a search for something online and get a hit, click on it and it has NOTHING to do with what I searched for – it is just a collection of ads.

Someone buys the keywords, or pays to get your eyeballs hijacked to their site. I fell violated somehow and surely am not inclined to look at any of the dozens of ads usually displayed on those pages.

It is spam, or reverse spam in that instead of coming to you in your email inbox they lure you under false pretenses to them.

I can not imagine they would have much success with this business model. Are there enough people so indiscriminate  that even though they have been essentially hijacked to a “store” (no disrespect for retailers intended, but I digress) that they will look, engage and actually buy stuff that had nothing to do with what they were looking for?

The resources for companies to do this are inexpensive so it probably goes under: If you throw enough crap at the wall, something will stick.

The negatives will ultimately be costly. I already have a growing blacklist of sites I know not to go to, ever when they come up in a search. The potential of the Internet becomes devalued with more and more spam per square inch of screen real estate and eyeballs.Companies that actually do have what you are looking for will probably have to pay more for online advertising just to come higher in a search. This cost will come down to us in the form of more expensive goods and services. We all are paying for “free” cost of the spammers not only in a form of higher prices, but also in wasted energy, resources and loss of sustainability.

If you know of a software that would allow me to exclude the spam sites from my searches, please let me know. If there is none, the development of one would be a great service I would gladly pay for.

“What are things that do not mix?” Ads and Reviews, Oil and water?

Posted on the April 23rd, 2009 under Noise to signal, Piplzchoice by Gregory Yankelovich

“Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site … for a price.”

What? I used to be a fan of Yelp. If this is true, they are dead to me. If by advertising with Yelp you can cleanse or bury the bad reviews, they have sold out all their readers.

Is this a case of one or 2 rogue  sales people or is it sanctioned practice across the board?

In either case it brings up some interesting questions.

Even if this is not a Yelp policy, but the unsanctioned actions of one unscrupulous sales person, doesn’t the business model of selling advertising on a peer/user review site just cry out for this kind of tampering?

It appears there is an inherent conflict of interest when the advertising from the businesses is combined with that business user reviews. It seems like a bad recipe, that can give you an indigestion (pun intended), but how is  an Internet business to make a “living” if selling advertising potentially undermines it’s integrity and primary beneficiaries of the service, the consumers are expecting not to pay for it?

There is another interesting question – is it ethical for Yelp, or any other Customer Reviews organization, employees to review a business? After all they are the consumers too, and have a right and interest to express their experiences. On the other hand what we, the consumer public, value most -  is the  unbiased opinions of people like ourselves, that have nothing to gain or lose by posting their reviews and sharing their experiences.

Which brings us back to how do providers of consumer reviews “get paid’ in a world where users can find free reviews?

Is it worth it to you to pay for the service for totally unbiased reviews?