These days everyone can think of examples of technologies that failed to launch regardless of how great the product was. If you work in the IT industry you can probably think of many examples of struggles with implementing new software and hardware tools in various corporate setting. If you simply do an online search for tips on implementing IT projects you will find many resources and “top 10 tips & mistakes to avoid” lists that seem to sounds all too similar. This is because IT projects are not new and we’ve had several decades to learn from past mistakes. There are also many big and small implementation companies with thousands of experts globally who can implement various systems for any business. A tremendous wealth and breadth of knowledge exists on how to implement IT projects – so why do many of them still fail to deliver the desired results?
IT projects are ‘people projects’ first
Throwing money and technology at a current problem is easy – just write a big cheque and get it put in by a team of hired experts. However addressing underlying problems in your business is difficult and often requires huge changes in culture, behaviour, training and staffing. These changes are hard and need to be a big part of every IT implementation – not just an afterthought or a fickle effort close to go-live. Making change management the forefront issue of your IT project changes the whole implementation approach and the likely outcomes. Getting various stakeholders across the organization involved early can drastically improve the uptake, usefulness, and sustainability of an implemented software.
You can’t get to success if you don’t know what it looks like
IT project success is usually defined in short term milestones like “finish design by X date” or “test system and resolve 90% of defects by go-live”. While the achievement of these targets can be a great indicator of how a project is doing, it is not great for capturing the true success of a technology implementation. In the case of a computerize maintenance management system (CMMS), perhaps success is really about giving your staff the proper tools so that they can better track their work and ultimately improve some key business metrics such as extending the life of your assets, decreasing the asset maintenance costs, or improving labour utilization by managing your staff’s work more effectively. Defining success as a longer term business outcome and setting clear, numerical targets gives the implementation project context and a bigger vision to work towards. It also makes it more obvious that simply putting a system in does not finish the job. Chances are there are many more initiatives that your organization will need to do to achieve your definition of success. Defining success and setting that vision can be a difficult exercise on its own if the leadership is divided on the topic.
Be frugal with your spending but consider long term support
As the costs pile up it might be very tempting to drastically cut back on funding and resources after a software goes live. This can be very detrimental however if that software is now a core part of your business. Technology changes and evolves quicker than ever today and continuous investment to improve tools, processes and how people use them requires on-going funding and support from your internal team of groomed Super Users. When planning your IT project make sure to be realistic about the 5 and 10 year total costs of the project and include funds for the long term continuous improvement, benefit realization initiatives and support for your end users. Major IT implementations shape your business over a long period of time and need to be seen as long-term investments that are supported by the leadership team.
