Align IT and Business on Critical Projects

Leadership alignment sessions, daily status reports during critical phases, and workforce collocation are all valuable techniques for aligning IT and the business on important IT projects and ensuring expectations are met. ...

... "one of the first things that he and other project leaders did was to collocate 20 business managers with 40 IT workers to help them stay in sync on the project's products and timetables. " ...

Via Computerworld: Customer Expectations on IT Projects

Critical Success Factors at the World Bank

With all the news about the World Bank recently, it is interesting to take a look at Critical Success Factors for their projects. A lot of the comments from the pundits have focused on the importance of the leadership in being able to carry out the World Bank's mission.
This paper lists 10 CSFs for Project Management. Many of these are familiar but the kind of international development projects that the World Bank carries out involve some less obvious ones. For people new to international projects, particularly involving developing countries, it makes interesting reading. One expects things like culture, technology and management to figure. But corruption - an estimate of 10% of project cost in one example, and, even in 2002, the importance of environmental factors might not have made one's personal top 10 list.
Critical Success Factors in Internation Development Project Management.

It's not just about the technology

Elaborating on the general theme of Critical Success Factors, this paper from Francis Wega explains how the organisational environment has to be right for a new Enterprise Project Management system to deliver value.
Overcoming Common Pitfalls in EPM Implementations - Beyond the Technical Execution.

We've discussed topics like Executive Support and Cultural Change Management. Here is a paper that pulls these threads and others together to drive home the point that just making a technology selection for an EPM system is not enough.

Business Intelligence Projects: Pick Sponsor Wisely

Business intelligence projects are popular and fairly straightforward to get approved at governance. However, survey data shows that being selective about sponsorship is critical to BI success. Choose your sponsor and steering team wisely, should you receive the nod for investment. ...

... "What raised the red flag for Burton, however, was that 40% of those polled said their business intelligence projects were owned by lower-level business executives. That isn't ideal, Burton said, because that group tends to have tactical rather than strategic roles ... " ...

Business intelligence projects fail without C-level ownership

The Nervous Project Manager

"I just wanted to tell you both good luck. We're all counting on you."

They say it's always good to hire a rich lawyer and buy from a poor salesperson. We might add to that to hire a nervous project manager. I'm of course half joking. Still, it's important to be vigilant about the things that can go wrong, and to confirm that issues are being addressed as required, especially in hot areas such as communication, testing, contingency plans, etc. The devil is often in the details.

This does not mean micromanagement. On the contrary, it's best to delegate work packages to the experts. But it's also important to be aware of what's going on in your project, and circulate regularly among your team. If details are being overloooked, often a gentle reminder is all that's needed.

At any rate, I'd rather have a nervous project manager than one who's running on autopilot.

Talking to Sponsors

A common question asked of a consultant is 'what do other organisations do?'. The accurate answer - 'it all depends...' - isn't enough. It's useful to have a framework for helping the client organisation to understand why context is so important. It also helps your engagement with the organisation by helping to surface strategic implementation concerns.
Putting the question in terms of Critical Success Factors catches the attention and starts the conversation about what do we have to do to be successful. Over the next few posts, we're going to have a look at a number of CSFs. In particular at:
- Methodology and Processes
- Project Management Expertise
- Technology Infrastructure
- Cultural Change Management
- Executive Support
It's important to understand that this list is not a menu (pick any two). They are all required to some extent. The extent will vary from organisation to organisation and depends on the level of maturity, the volume of project management activity, the goals of management, the degree of centralisation of the organisation and a host of other factors.