Why ICT Programmes Fail? Background:

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1 Why ICT Programmes Fail? Background: You only have to quickly scour the newspapers to get a real sense of the success rates of mid - large scale ICT programmes. In a short time you would feel somewhat nervous if you were an Executive about to launch into a significant ICT change agenda for your business. In fact, if you didn t want to believe the never ending cycles of media releases over ICT failures you may search on-line for recent statistics to give you an idea about what to watch out for. So why don t I save you some time and present a quick snapshot for you from leading surveys published on-line: Mid to large scale organisations are spending about 43% of their capital budgets on technology initiatives with an average return on investment of about 1%. Extensive surveys by major Consulting firms have revealed that only about 20% of the expected benefits are delivered and organisations don t or cant invest in benefit realisation due to lack of capability in this important area. A majority of large scale change Programmes (about 73%) are either late, delayed or cancelled and don t align to the organisations overall requirements. Most Executives and business staff are reporting a significant disconnect between their real requirements and expectations and what the program / project wants or can achieve. About 75% of project staff and participants lack confidence that their project will succeed. Every major change initiative relate to people; their behaviour; organisational culture and participation in support of the change and overall acceptance of the delivered solution; 75% of risks associated with the change are known but not acted upon; and 70% of organisations have suffered at least one project failure in the prior 12 months. Yes! These are very scary statistics. Particularly when you are relying on your business to deliver critical products and services to your customers and you have to endure an expensive, time consuming transformation agenda to keep pace with the changing world. This White Paper explores the KCS Top 5 tricks of the trade that will provide you the right targeted strategies for transforming your organisation for greater success. 1

2 KCS Top Trick # 1 Assess your Capability before you start: If you have ever taken a long hike with family or friends, the first thing you do before your big adventure is to take stock on how ready you are for the trek. Do I have everything I need? What could go wrong? How long will it take? Considering the size, scale and implications of the trek before departure is prudent because you can t throw in the towel and head for home half way through. Pre departure preparation may involve researching aspects about the trek, buying the right gear, undertaking some specific fitness training and assessing your fortitude for high risk and physically demanding hiking. Well, believe me; IT change programmes are no different. Once you have committed your organisation to the change it is too late to change your mind half way through; it s just too risky; too costly and potentially a career limiting move. Before you start your transformation you must assess the capability of your organisation to carry out the change and deliver the required benefits. A capability assessment allows you to assess the ability of your organisation to appropriately deal with: 2 Program Governance - How will your Board of Directors, Executives and senior staff understand and deal with the pace, complexity and amount of change. If they have never experienced a large ICT change program then much work will need to be undertaken to raise their understanding of a modern ICT implementation and the affect it can have on all those involved. Contract and vendor management - given that you will have high reliance on independent third parties to deliver your solution some of which will come from different places, cultures and be motivated by different agenda s. Business Analysis and Process Improvement - remembering that a large portion of key processes will change throughout the delivery cycle. Benefits realisation - given that your eye must be on the core outcomes you expect and will rely on as a result of the significant investment being made. Establishment of a Program Management Office - to support all aspects of delivery including the ability to provide you the required level of visibility without interfering in the day to day activities of the Program. Organisational change management - given that staff, customers and partners will need to live with the outcomes of the program long after its completion. Your IT department s capability - to support the programme effectively in Enterprise Architecture; environment management and configuration management, change control and balancing business as usual activities with the demands of the programme. These are but a few of the core capabilities you need to have mastered before you set out on your big adventure. Remember you are not alone in this journey. The best way to raise your organisations capability level is to bring in the right expertise to help. Such expertise must not be a replica of your organisation, but one who will challenge and test you and get you ready. One key role which is wise to bring in early is a well-qualified and experienced Programme Manager. This person, if they are good, will know what to look for and where the gaps may be. But my key warning; choose carefully. There are many people who call themselves professional programme managers and yet have never really consistently delivered large scale change agenda s. Check their credentials, their attitude and resilience. The programme manager will be the one individual who can either make or break your big adventure. If in doubt, check with KCS to help determine the right person for the job.

3 KCS Top Trick # 2 Hold Court: Developing a leading edge strategy for your business is hard enough in an operational sense with day to day business obligations, but driving a strategy for succuss with a large scale change program is even harder. Key reason! Getting everyone to understand, accept and synchronise with your vision of the new enterprise in a short time frame. This requires a very different and innovative approach, one which avoids the slow and time consuming standard consultation processes which at best delivers mediocre results. As a visionary, you need to ensure your Executive team, staff; customers and partners understand the coming change, can react to it and take the necessary ownership and responsibility to provide the right level of input into the change process. It is only through holding Court with your enterprise stakeholders that you will be able to achieve the required understanding and buy-in. Without that, you are dead in the water. The best example of holding Court is to run a KCS driven Catalyst event. Catalyst is a 2 or 3 day event for up to 200 participants. It brings diverse stakeholders together into a constructive forum and accelerates all the required changes. The event identifies designs and develops required information around solution design and all associated frameworks that deal successfully with complexity and helps identify and sequence the required process, technology and people change. Ultimately, Catalyst delivers to you and the stakeholders a well-documented, thought out action plan, one in which all stakeholders have had input and lend their commitment too. So holding Court is not just about communicating with your stakeholders, it s about your articulation of the vision and empowering those around you to implement what the organisation as a whole ultimately designed. A more powerful mechanism to drive your change programme to completion could not be found. Addressing transformational change without holding court is just like starting out on a journey without a map; you may think you know where you are going but end up in the wrong place. KCS Top Trick # 3 Secure and manage the Right Partners: With the continual fast paced advancements in software and the associated technologies, every large scale transformation programme requires the assistance of a suitable systems integrator coupled with the chosen software vendor. The role of these two critical partners is often complex and presents a number of significant problems to the un-initiated. The software vendor is required to provide the software out of the box and will control the licensing agreement and advise on configuration of the software either on premise or in the cloud. The software vendor knows the details of their software and guards this intellectual property more than gold itself, but only wants to provide the software and not get involved in the overall implementation and integration of the software. Enter the Systems Integrator Partner (SI Partner). The SI Partner is responsible for the endend configuration and or customisation of the software and will provide a myriad of services including data extract, transform and load to the new system, integration of the new software to legacy systems, training and organisational change, business process reengineering, testing and the list goes on. The SI Partner is a qualified, capable organisation who can deal with the myriad of challenges that accompany the implementation of a modern ICT solution, but watch out, there are traps that can befall you: 3 Undertake a robust selection / tender process - Check around and get the right size and culture of partner. This is critical because not every relationship runs smooth and you need to feel comfortable with the organisation that will be implementing your solution. If

4 you are a small organisation, don t choose an SI Partner that is bigger than you - you will never get their attention. Partner for the long term not just the transformation - you never know when you may need them again so don t attempt to win at all costs adopt a win/win approach to most issues and problems. Use the partner to help achieve your outcomes; remember you can t transform on your own. Check and validate their capability people, process, methods. Don t be fooled by the marketing, test and validate their capability right through the organisation including their support practices and processes. Know exactly what they will deliver and what you must do as part of that process shared responsibilities are more often than not a major problem and ensuring lines of delineation, defined roles and responsibilities and who owns what accountabilities will ensure minimal dispute over the longer term. Key Gotcha (watch how they are engaged) - fixed price, time and materials, risk / reward - these are some of the commercial arrangements which are available but always remember, the Partner is not doing it because they like you; they are doing it because you are paying them. In this regard, you will need to ensure a suitable and viable commercial relationship between you. If for whatever reason, the relationship no longer proves profitable for the Partner, you will need to ensure appropriate protection and monitor any cost cutting that may occur including offshoring; methodology shortcuts and vested interests to expand into other areas they as a Partner have no right to be in. Top Trick # 4 Architect your Solution (Top to Bottom): At the heart of every great change is a work of art called the solution architecture? This piece of work is more important than developing your business requirements. The solution architecture will in an unbiased way enable you to define a future state free from existing business processes; current state thinking and operational interference. The solution architecture will at its core enable you to develop an integrated technology solution that when complete will be transformational. At a minimum, the architecture must: Engineer how your new business model will operate - This includes the way clients and staff engage and transact; and how various solution components which when integrated will work together to support maximum automation and provide a range of services and outputs that enhance client and staff experiences. The new business model must articulate the right people, doing the right things under defined and controlled business processes. Define the overall technology systems and tools that will be required and how they integrate and work together to create an end to end automated solution. Articulate what information will be required and how will it be governed and kept secure and meet all associated compliance and quality requirements of the business. Specify what infrastructure will be needed and any required changes to the network topology to ensure its viability relevant to business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities. 4

5 Top Trick # 5 Develop and Lead the Team: The best laid plans are just that.plans. Without the people (business and technical) to implement them, no progress and no change can occur. Therefore, the best means for success is to invest in the right leadership that will develop, lead and support the team through the good and more difficult times. Getting the right people is often the first and most difficult battle you have. There are many in the ICT industry that claims to be able to cure every disease but can t cut code, test or solve complex problems. For that reason, recruit carefully. Ensure you hire right the first time, hire for attitude first then train for skill. It does not matter how technically good you think someone may be, if they have a poor attitude, you will never change them; so don t bother trying; just don t hire them. However once you have the best team you can muster; you must invest and expend a great deal of energy in developing and leading them ensuring passion; positivity; commitment; professionalism; and trust in everything they do. Such passion will carry you forward and shield you from fatigue which often occurs in change programmes. In fact, expending time on developing the right culture will pay significant dividends and support all other cultural changes you wish to make across the organisation. Paving the way with a proactive, fast paced; outcomes driven programme will ultimately drive your organisation head first into the change agenda. To support this: Develop a cultural action plan defining the type of culture and operating principles you expect with the right measures and incentives. Invest in appropriate HR support both on the programme and in the business to maintain high staff focus and support including counselling; coaching and mentoring. Consider relevant performance and retention schemes. Implement the right backfilling of resources where appropriate. Ensure delegations are afforded and followed and staff are empowered to do the job they were hired to do. Nothing will kill productivity greater than disempowerment; remember you have to trust your team - they may do it differently to you; they may show you things you were not expecting but you need to trust them and let them get on with the job. In Summary: In general, the ICT industry and the organisations that it serves still have a long way to go to be known as the reliable, innovative and value adding sector that it proclaims to be. To this day, the onus remains on organisations to own their change agenda and tie their technology outputs to greater organisational outcomes as well as manage the change process end to end. In real terms, this means organisations must be the master of their own destiny. They must remain in control of their change programmes and have the right monitoring and controlling mechanisms in place to ensure success. The new ICT environment that now surrounds modern organisations is one which is highly integrated, where the integrity of its data is critical to business operations and where robust infrastructure and applications serve the needs of business on a 24 hour basis. This means ongoing investment in technology and continual transformation in order to keep pace and to survive. So follow the KCS recommended tricks of the trade to protect your business and ensure your ultimate success. This 5

6 White paper has been developed to assist you with relevant information about what to look for when considering undertaking a transformational change programme. We hope this paper has been useful to you and appreciate any feedback on its content. If you wish to know more or discuss this paper with KCS, please contact us accordingly. About KCS: Kingsford Consulting Services is a management and ICT consulting business that is based on the belief that our client s needs are of the utmost importance. We are committed to meeting those needs and providing tangible value in everything we do. Our expertise has been gained from over 28 years in delivering large scale business transformational change programmes and associated strategy and advisory services to many industry sectors. KCS is set apart by our passion for high quality service delivery that ensures your business and ICT problems are dealt with quickly and effectively. KCS is located in beautiful Brisbane, Queensland, Australia at 91 Schooner Circuit, Manly West, Brisbane, Queensland, Phone: Web: This document is for informational purposes only. Kingsford Consulting Services makes no warranties, express, implied, or statutory as to the information contained in this document. 6