BUSINESS-IT ALIGNMENT: LESSONS FROM THE FIELD Ahsan Rahi, PMP [email protected] | http://AhsanRahi.com/ South Texas College Information Technology Forum, December 4 th , 2009 © All Contents Copyright 2009 by Ahsan Rahi, except where attributed.
Dec 19, 2015
BUSINESS-IT ALIGNMENT: LESSONS FROM THE FIELDAhsan Rahi, [email protected] | http://AhsanRahi.com/
South Texas College Information Technology Forum, December 4th, 2009
© All Contents Copyright 2009 by Ahsan Rahi, except where attributed.
My Background
Academic background in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Nineteen years experience primarily in Oil & Gas industry (employee & consultant)
Work experience focused on enterprise software development, project & operations management large technology & process initiatives
Outsourcing of company’s software development Project Management cultural change Global Initiative to improve Service Quality
Today’s Talk
What does it take to deliver successful IT projects?
We’ll talk about what are considered “soft skills” but often have a larger impact on outcome than the technical skills
Why? Evolution of IT within the organization
Pendulum shift from centralized->decentralized Shift in reporting / commoditization
BUT THE MAIN REASON is that we continue to fail….
Hurricane Rita
Each iteration provides new information and takes us closer to the end vision. Uncertainty remains, and the shape of the
cone is proportional.
Why can’t we do the same in IT?Thanks to Todd Little, Landmark Graphics Corp.
Case Study for Today’s Talk The Avance Project: Collaboration & project
management system for project & program management of Oil & Gas projects Increase information sharing across projects Enable program tracking & management Complementary to remote operations support center
Target Userbase: Very large skills & geographic diversity
New technology (not a sustaining or maintenance project)
Context IPM business unit of Largest Oil & Gas service company Current state: no program level information, manual
project status, PM Support group helped projects fill out standardized templates.
Hopefully shed some light on deployment considerations for Collaboration projects – the new wave!
Vision of the Avance Pilot
Project Collaboration Culture
Consistent Practices(Processes & Standards)
Avance (Collaboration)
Avance(Project Management)
Scope of Avance
Initiative
Information lifespan
Time
EPMS
Brief – No lasting information creation.Utility Timespan: Hours To Days
Storming – Usually leads to Information of longer-term Utility.Utility Timespan: Days To Months
Operational (Project) – Information required for current ongoing operations/projects.Utility Timespan: Months to Years
Reference – Historical and occasionally-accessed information.Utility Timespan: Years+
Phone
IMEMail
Groove
Docum
ent
Managem
ent
Syste
mPortal
Websi
tes
Product
ivity
docs
What is Alignment
The degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business and expends its resources, pursues projects, and provides information consistent with them
Primary challenge in delivering new technology to businesses today, but don’t take my word for it…
Project Outcomes
Failed
Challenged
Succesful
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
20061996
Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim Johnson, CIO.com, ‘How to Spot a Failing Project’
Features & Functionality Delivered
Always or Often Used: 20%
Never or Rarely Used: 64%
Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim Johnson
Rarely used19%
Never used45%
Some-times16%
Often13%
Always7%
Factors influencing failure PROJECT UNDERSTANDING
Misalignment in the context of the project Wrong definition of success (IT-centric KPI’s)
BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT IT PM insulated from company dynamics Impact of proper change management is
ignored PEOPLE
Domain knowledge vs. IT Expertise Increasing velocity of user expectations
Project Understanding: Complexity Context-Adaptive PM
Assessment: Techniques typically needed to manage the uncertainty of a project (risks as well as opportunities) are distinct and often quite different from the strategies to manage its complexity
Complexity of a project is a function of its organizational, logistical, and engineering structures and attributes are chosen to capture the critical structural factors in the above categories.
Uncertainty of a project on the other hand refers to the risks – known and unknown – associated with the project.
Context-Adaptive Project Management: A Scoring Model for Assessing Project Complexity and Uncertainty
Outcome of Single-Project Assessment
Pre-salesTechnical Team
Pre-salesBusiness Team
TechnicalProject Team
Project Understanding: Metrics Metrics to measure
success are often IT-oriented e.g. Number of users Number of hits per
day Number of support
calls; ART ROI: Amount of
personnel time saved vs. manual processes
Business metric: Rig NPT saved (file)
Q: Are there any good IT measures for a collaboration project?
Environment: IT Insulated from External Dynamics Collaboration type projects often require large-
scale participation in order to be useful to the target community.
Therefore can’t follow the traditional IT deployment model of pilot -> analyze -> full deployment
Limited resources/funding & - most often – mgmt reluctance to deploy without piloting means we have to find a way to segment the target population
Use techniques such as Technology Adoption Lifecycle to segment target population…
Segment Your Users
Technology Adoption Lifecycle
Focus on one group at a time – chasm b/w EA & EM!
Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore
ENVIRONMENT: Change Management1. People will alter their mind-sets only if they
see the point of the change and agree with it enough to give it a try
2. The surrounding structures - reward and recognition systems, etc. - must be aligned with the desired new behavior
3. Employees must have the training and tools to do what is asked of them
4. Finally, employees must see people they respect modeling the new behaviors actively and consistently
Psychology of Change Management, McKinsey
PEOPLE
IT, like other disciplines, evaluates employees based on development in IT technical skills –
However IT is more like a basic science (math, etc) - of limited use without context
Pure
IT D
ev
Petr
/Dev
0
5
10
15
20