Increasing software project failure rate

Software project continue to have an increasing failure rate according to a Standish report. Standish regularly reports on the success of software projects. This year shows a decrease in success.

While more and more emphasis is placed on project management for the failure, I believe that the real reason is a lack of business value definition. In too many cases, projects get initiated with a good and valid business reason, but the "solution" is seen to be the installation of software. Software is a tool which can help a business improve, but it is not a solution by itself.

More effort needs to be placed at the front end to determine the real goal. The real goal might be to increase sales, reduce costs, improve cash flow, improve quality of service. By using a software product the business may be able to capture and analyze data more quickly and easily, deliver goods more quickly, etc., but the software will not do that. It can help, but if your business process is ignored, you may end up creating more problems, more quickly. That doesn't help reach the business goal.

Start by clearly identifying the business goal, then show how the goal will be achieved. When you see what steps are required, you can identify where software can help. After you have decided how the software can help, don't turn the project over to IT for implementation. Keep focused on the goal, which should deliver business results, earlier rather than later.

If there is something in the project that doesn't produce business results, you will learn that earlier and be able to adjust the deliverables of the project to ensure success.

Key issues in CRM software failures

I attended a town hall meeting today on IT failures specifically targeting CRM. The key items mentioned about the failures all related to not It and non-software issues. Some of the key items that I took away included:

• Software comes with the vendors version of best practices. This may not be your company's view of best practices. Converting to their best practice could hurt your results.
• For CRM in particular, attempting to get information on what your best salespeople do is a problem. If you ask them what they do, so that you can copy it, then watch them, you will find that they don't practice what they say. This is true of other professions, but it may not have the same impact. Most of what people do is done subconsciously. That's why what they say and what they do is different.
• Many IT projects fail because they try to do too many things for too many people. This increases complexity and increases opportunity for failure.
• Because of the defined complexity, the application becomes difficult to navigate and decreases productivity and sales. It's better to make it simple.
• There is too much emphasis on training vs. education. Training tells you how to do it. Education helps you understand why you should do it and how that will help to improve performance. There was another question related to how much training should be provided vs. making the software intuitive. Would anybody play games if they required you to attend a full day training session?

Those were my key takeaways. You can check for more on Twitter at #ITfail.

Top Ten List for CIOs

The Chief Information Officer title has been around for some time now. The title is often used to describe the person who heads the Information Technology function for a business. While this is normally true, I believe that this title should be restricted to leaders who recognize the value that Information technology should be providing for a business.

Too many CIOs are still "managing the business" That is, they are responsible for all of the technical staff and hardware and manage the day-to-day operations of the IT business. While this is a necessary function, it doesn't add value.

The Society for Information Management (SIM) have completed a study of CIOs and came back with the following list of priorities:

1. Business productivity and cost reduction.
2. IT and Business alignment.
3. Business agility and speed to market.
4. Process re engineering.
5. IT Cost reduction.
6. IT reliability and efficiency.
7. IT Strategic planning.
8. IT innovations.
9. Security and privacy.
10. CIO Leadership role.

The focus here is clearly on the business and not on IT as the driver. This says one of two things: Either the CIOs polled are taking action or at least the message is getting through.

In the past, too much of the focus has been on Reliability and efficiency (#6) or on Security (#9). While these are important, they are what the IT operation needs to deliver. The CIO needs to be focused on the business.

See Top Ten Presentation.