“If driven by IT, the decision is more focused on operational and architectural considerations than business requirements.”

This is a comment that seems to have been doing the rounds recently in one form or another. Lets examine more closely to see who should be responsible for project decision making.

Actually the information technology department must always take into consideration a variety of views when making a decision to purchase any software; including:

◊ Business needs

◊ Business processes

◊ Functionality offered

◊ The technology architecture

◊ Cost

◊ ROI

When a decision is made entirely by the business community then this can lead to inconsistencies in the corporate architecture, which can increase operational costs, particularly in solutions where data integration is required, for example the BI solution.

Having worked on a large number of projects over the years there is one one consistent part of any successful project – the views of the business. The author has much experience delivering projects, on one occasion he worked on two simultaneous projects to deliver the same type of solution run at two different corporations having a similar technology architecture. The results of the selection process led to the selection of two different products, all because of the business focus of the selection process.

Tough times do call for strategic decision making, but that does need to be a balanced decision considering all of the factors involved. Purchasing of solutions is never simple, but too many companies fail to perform a comprehensive business process review – the make a sweeping assumption that they must replace their ailing ERP solution. All too often it is the business process itself that is broken, not the system that supports it. Simply replacing the system without fixing the business process will only give short term gratification, within five years that corporation will be changing systems yet again; more dissatisfied than ever before with the level of service offered by their IT department. Yet the basic problem is not an IT one.

Deployments should always be executed in the best interests of the business. The way to ensure this occurs is having business boards control the spending of project budgets. It is through the partnership of business and technology management that there is the right level of sponsorship and intervention. It is not about inter-departmental turf wars, but synergy and achieving broader business goals.

Inter-systems integration can often one of the greatest challenges faced for any specific deployment. Business intelligence is always a crucial factor to consider. BI solutions must be ongoing within any corporation; every new system brings new data, which is required to continue developing the analytical capabilities. Of course any business analytics capability must grow even if there are no new systems being added.

The net result of all this change should always be a leaner and more focused organisation that is able to make intelligent, fact based decisions across the business.

We would all like to say “Hold your horses we are only running 1 project this year” however this simply does not meet business reality. For the IT manager as soon as they have defined the annual list of priorities, there is pressure to add new projects, or to change the scope of existing authorised projects.

It is simply not possible to say ‘NO’ to every request, eventhough this word is one of the most powerful within the IT Manager’s vocabulary. The pressures of these competing priorities can result in the splitting of attention, loss of focus, and inability to complete tasks and projects in a timely manner. In today’s business climate there is immense pressure for projects to succeed, yet we know that each additional request reduces the chances on-time delivery

We may moan that the business community has no concept of the impact of a change in scope. Yet in the time it takes to deliver the average project business needs have changed and IT cannot ignore the evolving needs. Organizations need to reliably deliver projects in shorter and shorter intervals, and some of the pressure include:

• Many projects and few clear priorities
• Demands to multi-task
• Procrastination,
• Poor planning,
• Personal disorganization

Lack of clear priorities will cause inefficiencies in the day-to-day utilisation of project resources. If a Mary finishes a milestone ahead of schedule does the project manager or Mary know what they should be doing next?  As we have multiple projects Mary may think they can get a head-start on a new project, yet this may not be the wisest course of action at this time.

It is not a matter of whether or not to prioritise. It is largely a question of who is the most appropriate person to do a specific task and providing clear priorities within the context of the overall priority list. In the absence of priorities, team members will use their own prioritisation methods. First in first out (FIFO) is rarely the best form of prioritisation, yet it is the method that most people will fall back-on in the absence of any other method.

Multi-tasking (or overloading) is recognised as one of the biggest obstacles in a project for a team member, yet an IT manager is expected to do this with consummate ease. For the IT manager it is essential to gain control of their workday,  The key to doing this effectively is in ensuring that the “do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it” rule is effectively applies to every item in your inbox (and I don’t just mean the Outlook Inbox, I include the physical and mental inboxes as well) click here for an earlier article on this topic. Once you have control on your inbox, you can control the competing priorities. You therefore increase your personal productivity by gaining control of your workday.

By Peter B. Giblett