BUSINESS-IT ALIGNMENT: LESSONS FROM THE FIELDAhsan Rahi, PMPrahi@ieee.org | 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

A Long, Long, Time Ago,In a Company Not So Far Away…

The Management Review

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%

IT Hope vs. Reality

Bain Annual Management Survey (n=359)

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

Application to Portfolio Management

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…

Analyze via Influence Diagram

Segment Your Users

Technology Adoption Lifecycle

Focus on one group at a time – chasm b/w EA & EM!

Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore

Merged Approach: Your Roadmap

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

Conclusion

IT is process-based; Business is outcome-based

Clearly established IT Steering Committee’s managing to business outcomes

Necessity for IT folks to specialize in particular domains