Four deficiencies in IT delivery

Although the importance and need for innovation and delivery through information technology has grown in recent years, some of the IT delivery requests do not produce the results and benefits expected by the customers involved. It is essential to understand why.

During 2017, we conducted surveys to obtain feedback from business units on their assessment of the quality of IT delivery during the year. The survey results were balanced against IT delivery effectiveness, but some common themes that need to be addressed as critical areas of weakness were consistently highlighted and will be discussed in this article.

We mainly identify four main deficiencies in IT delivery:

I) Lack of a clear “agreement” between the IT team and the business units:

Often times, business units will look directly at the solution to a problem without fully understanding the problem being addressed or the benefits of the solution. For an IT delivery to be successful, the business unit must prepare and accept a “document of agreement” with a clear description of the problem and a clear business case that includes a clear definition of the success factors for the project implementation.

An agreement document does not have to be a lengthy document, as the project document would include the details, but it is required to ensure that the end result of the IT delivery complies with the request of the business unit and to ensure that both parties have a common understanding of the problem and the relative solution. The document must include at least the following elements:

• Executive Summary.

• Deliverables (products).

• Schedule.

• Milestones: Milestones can be Customer Acceptance, Measure of Progress, External Dependency, and Realization of Benefits. Milestones can occur beyond the initiative end date, especially for profit realization. There should be at least 3 customer satisfaction milestones, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.

• Budget and estimated costs.

• Prerequisites / dependencies.

• Risks

• Quality Assurance: In addition to the standard quality assurance criteria, this section should include measurable success factors and define whether an IT release is considered successful or not. If a project cannot identify the success factors necessary for successful implementation, the scope of the project could easily change during implementation and the quality of the final phase of the project could easily be argued as there are no established measures of success. Having a measurable definition of scope and what constitutes a successful IT delivery implementation is essential.

Without a documented agreement from the business units, IT delivery could easily become less effective or even fail due to delayed implementation, scope changes, or disagreements about what is expected of the required delivery.

II) Weak project management

In general, project managers need to be able to manage and coordinate all project logistics. Many of IT project managers generally focus on technology solution delivery and fail to address many other factors that are essential for successful IT delivery, such as:

• Planning (activities and resources)

• Definition of scope

• Time estimation

• Cost estimate

• Develop a budget

• Documentation

• Risk and problem management

• Monitoring and reporting on progress

• Quality control

• Profit taking

While the above list seems to be obvious and is documented in every project management methodology, numerous IT deliverables fail as the project manager focuses on a subset of the above and cannot balance all of the above responsibilities. The project manager must focus on allowing for business unit expectations, delivery dates, and must be able to differentiate between scope fluctuation and valid user concerns if they want to improve efficiency and reduce the number of project failures.

III) Lack of adequate planning:

In general, the performance of a successful delivery is directly related to the effectiveness of the planning phase. Unfortunately, many IT teams are not patient and do not take enough time to have a complete plan to achieve the requested goals. Lack of planning generally results in untimely solution delivery, wrong scope or goal delivered, and overspending of the agreed cost / budget.

Most successful project plans had realistic milestones with an unrealistic timeline; or they will use an outdated planning model that has nothing to do with today’s business environment. IT delivery plans must match current business unit trends, organizational goals, and end-user needs. If they don’t, the project will soon be doomed.

IV) Lack of clear communication

Communication is key to the success of any IT delivery. Many IT teams interact with the business units during the pre-implementation phase while gathering the requirements and designing the solution and then disappear for a period of time during the implementation phase … The regular dialogue between executive management, managers project managers and end users always contributed to the successful delivery of IT. Many business units have cited lack of communication as a major factor for IT delivery shortages, felt isolated numerous times, and then were presented with a problem or solution that contributed to the failure of the entire goal. To be successful in any IT delivery, the flow of communication must be constant between the IT delivery project manager and the business units.

In conclusion, for IT delivery to improve, you need to carefully address the four elements listed above. Considering that IT teams are focused on the technology solution and sometimes become complacent with the execution of the agreed deliverables, a tangible agreement document helps to manage the expected deliverables in an effective way. This saves both parties a significant amount of time and effort in clarifying expectations and determining the success of the IT delivery.