One of the key criteria for success of any IT Project is finding the right People to do the task. How do you know that you have found them? There are 6 criteria that should be fulfilled to get the team you need for success.
1. Project Management should understand the Business Objectives
The management of a project should fully understand the impact of achieving the right Project objectives on the results of the Business. Too often IT projects are steered on derived objectives that breathe too much of an IT-driven strategy, focusing on “implementing new technology” or “creating architectural flexibility”. All though these are noble objectives, they run the risk that there are insufficiently aligned with what the business really needs to be delivered from the project and that justified the underlying business case in the first place.
2. Having people with the right Mindset
A Project is a contract between a principal and the project organization. To deliver on the contract the project organization needs to deliver on every milestone and action point between the start and the end of the project. There can be no delays. To achieve this you need people who stick to their commitments and are sufficiently self-steering to initiate the right actions. These people need little stimulation to go the extra mile that is needed to obtain the right results in time. Typically, when looking for them, you will hardly ever find them idle.
3. Understanding and executing Organizational Change Management Strategies
“Are there any worthwhile changes to be made that no not require a shift of power?”. This question underlines the fact that projects that have a material impact on business results typically include a profound change in the way people work together. The creation of a new equilibrium in roles and relationships will invoke resistance to change and therefore requires special attention. The project should be able to explicitly steer this change process and not become a toy in the hands of those who strive for deviating objectives.
4. Knowledge of the Business
Your team should understand the business, meaning its markets and customers, the way it competes, the setup of business processes derived from that and the “who is who” in the user organization. Failure to understand all this will fuel the risk of embarking on a complex IT project with limited business value.
5. Knowledge of the existing IT landscape
Since the early 90’s large companies have been investing in complex ERP systems. Today, many large multinationals own extremely complex landscapes consisting of best of breed solutions with multiple interfaces. Company specific customizations have been inherited year after year to result in complexity that only those who have been part of that history still understand to the full. Accept that fact and get those people on board!
6. Knowledge of the Architectural Strategy of key Software Vendors
Your team should understand the Strategy of the key Software Vendors whose products you are using. Your Architecture decisions may easily be based on choosing software components that in fact are a dead end street in the software vendor’s new strategy. For example, consider the impact of SAP’s acquisition of Ariba on their strategy for Procurement functionality in their software suite.
