Failed IT Projects; Lessons Learned
A while ago, I started a discussion on LinkedIn’s MainframeZone with the title “Failed IT Projects, anybody willing to share?” (http://lnkd.in/Fd2dFx) about mainframe migration projects that, well…, didn’t go as planned. I had some good feedback and more is welcome but one thing is certain, there are lessons to be learned.
The most important lesson? When something sounds too good to be true, it is. When someone tells you an existing application on the mainframe (or even a complete mainframe) can be replaced with something that costs is less than 50% of the current costs, something is terribly wrong…. BUT, somehow, at this very moment, somebody is convincing a member of the board or another C-Level executive that this is what his / her company needs…
In IT, one of the things we do not do well is coming up with real business arguments when we are confronted with an executive who tells us that only a major overhaul / migration of the existing systems will prepare the company ready for the future. Very understandable, because it IS really hard to fight a very expensive report created by expensive consultants from an company with an reputation. But as you can read from some of the comments in MainframeZone, they DO get it wrong sometimes.
Be prepared. Just when I was writing this blog, I received an email from SearchCIO with an article titled: “Your technology investments are vital to the business, so prove it” (http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240114312/Your-technology-investments-are-vital-to-the-business-so-prove-it?asrc=EM_UTC_16161335&track=NL-964&ad=859997&). Read this for a start to see how others didn’t wait for the business to come to them, but they took the initiative to show the value of IT. But also visit (either in person or virtual) conferences, local and international groups and talk about these things. Don’t expect to get real money figures from your peers, but figure out how many MIPS Bank ABC is using and then compare that with some official numbers like # of customers. You’ll be surprised to see that some peers do things much more efficient than others. I know of comparable banks where 1 uses about 2 times as many MIPS as the other while both have about the same revenue and # account holders.. Compare simple things like MIPS, # of staff managing, # transactions and try and see how good (or bad) you do against these numbers.
The funny thing is that, once you get started, the numbers start to make more sense. They give more insight which automatically leads to new numbers and more insight. Too often, I have seen IT managers caught by surprise, pushed in a corner to defend the way things have been done for a long time already. Often, the time pressure alone was enough to make the internal business case look very unprofessional compared to the external business case. Prepare for the unknown, isn’t that what we have tried to do for ages with the systems we developed? So we have the skills, let’s use them for business reasons….
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