VCS PROJECT V.3

VCS PROJECT V.3

SECTION ONE

V.3 project delay could well become the Holy Grail for VCS when it was seeking to improve their technology infrastructure, organizational efficiency, and competitiveness. If you work in the business world, you have likely heard of or experienced horror stories with enterprise software implementations that range from daily headache to loss of business. But the fact is that most organizations do not anticipate project delay. Instead, they plan for success, governed by budget, next step deliverables, executive expectations, and go-live deadlines. Heads-down to the task at hand, the project manager and team have little visibility and less control over potential risks within the V.3 project until it's too late. The business of pre-empting project delay begins with understanding that there is a preventative approach that can provide planed project assurance at critical points in the project's evolution. It begins with clear understanding of expectations from the executives, to the business and IT management, to the software vendors and end users.

Consider these key findings from the report, The Impact of Business Requirements on the Success of Technology Projects from IAG Consulting: Companies with poor business analysis capability will have three times as many project delays as successes .68% of companies are more likely to have a marginal project or outright delay than a success due to the way they approach business analysis. Companies pay a premium of as much as 60% on time and budget when they use poor requirements practices on their projects. Over 41% of the IT development budget for software, staff and external professional services will be consumed by poor requirements at the average company using average analysts versus the optimal organization. In fact, the horror stories continue. Industry experts have recently published the following, IT projects come in at a success rate of only 29%, Average cost over-run is 56% and Average schedule delay is 84% beyond plan. Simply translated, this means that nearly 70% of implementations will fail, cost more than 50% over budget, and take nearly twice as long as planned. (Atkinson, 1999, 337-342)

The extreme complexity and poor success rate of software implementations continues to baffle many executives. Given that there are accredited bodies of knowledge surrounding software implementations, certifications for project management professionals, a growing field of highly skilled practitioners, endless tools, methodologies and countless studies on what makes projects successful why do projects still fail? The delays can range from project cost overruns to missed expectations, disgruntled users to “train wrecks” which are wastelands of time and money in the form of software that is never implemented or projects that are simply cancelled.

You would think that, over the years, project management would have evolved along with the technology that is being implemented. In truth, the high rate of project delay in today's organizations is proof that project implementation methodologies have not kept.  

So, why do projects fail?

Lack of top management commitment

Unrealistic expectations

Poor requirements definition

Improper package selection

Gaps between software and business ...