The search for perfection in software projects

When installing software to run your business, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that most software today is very flexible and offers a lot of options. The bad news is that the software is flexible and offers a lot of options.

These options offer the opportunity to collect a lot of data that may be useful for your business. This data can be the source of failure of your project.

In speaking to a colleague today, I was reminded of all of the projects that I have been associated with and many others that I have encountered after they failed to achieve their objectives. In many of these, the planning process is the source of the problem. Each project is considered to be a major event. Since it is such a major event, the planners want to "get it right", and they assume that they won't get a chance to do it again. So they attempt to collect all of the data that they can, and anything that might be useful in the future. Anyone associated with making software work is familiar with the term GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). If the quality of the data is poor, then the system just won't do what you want it to do. This results in failure of the project, or failure to achieve the return on investment.

The problem with any data collection system (that's what the software is), is that when you collect new data, you are changing the way people do their jobs. The more that you change it, the more difficult that it is to do the job. People may not be receptive to that change. When the job is made more difficult by requiring that new data be collected, people become more reluctant to do the extra work, until they see value from that effort.

The more data that you try to collect, the longer the planning process takes, the more effort it takes to get the job done, the longer it takes to implement and the longer it will take to get a return on investment. This stretches people's patience and reduces their interest in doing the extra effort.

Many projects, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) suffer from this disease. The planners see all sorts of opportunity in collecting data about customers, the interaction with customers. They attempt to get salespeople to collect this information. The salespeople see no return on investment of their time, and they don't collect quality data. The result is a failure of the project on at least some level.

The solution is to narrow your focus. Define the business outcomes that you want, identify the data that is required to deliver those outcomes and implement those features as quickly as possible. Measure whether those outcomes are being achieved and show your salespeople the results. Remember that they will be looking at it from the WIIFM perspective (What's in it for me).

Once you have achieved your desired outcomes, look for the next step and the next desired outcome. Many project planners look at a project from a one time perspective, rather than an iterative perspective. They want to capture all of the data the first time, and that dooms their project to failure.