Skip to main content

IT Metrics - Project and Risk Management


Project Management is undoubtedly one of the key IT activities any CIO has to properly address if he wants to appropriately run the overall IT agenda.

During my professional career many people has approached me asking which are in my opinion the more important aspects of running a successful project, and why? I always come back to them with two main building block recommendations; the first one is to focus on project communication during the entire project time frame. This is a essential element of a well manage project because doing a proper job on communicating progress, risks, mitigation activities, achievements, etc. we will increase the level of people engagement, both internally within our teams and externally through the entire business organisation.



Some times under the pressure to deliver critical operational milestones we tend to focus on project operations and IT deliverables without having in place a proper communication agenda. This is a clear mistake that could jeopardize other project deliverables on the long run. I used to manage Project communication as an intimate part of the Change Management activities, this due to the fact that doing this way it naturally allow us to raise up the importance of the already defined communication tasks. Whether we take a decision to go for a more tactical-level communication, such traffic-light indicators, whether we implement a detail operational project scorecard, combining project KPIs and management summaries, the point here is to design this communication tools in line with the different business stakeholder expectations. This means that before we close the definition of the project information elements we have to take into account what information needs are required by the different business areas. This to say that we cannot do this activity just as an internal IT project exercise, which used to be one of the more common project mistakes. I recommend a formal 360-consultation process followed by an smart selection of the outcome exercise, and this before we deliver the final set of a well-balanced project information components.

The second building block I always recommend is about the Project readiness, say to invest all the time you believe can be needed to make a thorough analysis, this in order to understand how much and how well prepared are the different project components (Information architecture, Technology architecture, IT people, user community, vendors plus related project contracts and finally the change management activities). I used to do this by running a pre-risk analysis exercise using a risk reference table that I have been building during all these years. This gives me the opportunity and the Project Managers to anticipate any lack of readiness regarding the above mentioned project components, and even more important, by quickly and timely react to any potential project risk resulting from this exercise. The outcome of this due diligence process is usually a set of recommendations and contingency activities that have to be implemented and in place before we move to the capability phase of the project.

Those are two of a set of different project control activities that I always recommend when confronted with a medium-large projects. However is important to highlight that some times the project risk is not only directly related to the project length but also to the project complexity that resulted from measuring the different project components, participants, technology, business readiness, business project buy-in, etc. In order to measure project complexity there are other management techniques I will talk in a separate blog spot.           

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID - A TECHNOLOGY ENABLER

This post is more a thought on what has been a difficult period of time for many people all around the world, and of course I was not an exception….. I couldn’t be! Since March 2019 we have been forced to change our ways of life, work and relationship to a point we would never imagine. We are undoubtedly immersed in an unprecedent situation that despite all the difficult moments we faced and perhaps we still have to deal with, had helping our society to do a substantial and qualitative leap. In less than one year the world reacted and created the conditions to work pursuing a common objective. As a result of that or because of that, we have seen an unprecedent evolution and in some cases revolution, in the way we manage R&D innovation and related technology.    The Information Technology industry has not been an exception by any means. Many technology products that were launch to the market before the COVID or during this particular period, especially the ones looking at i...
Post a Comment
Read more

IT Metrics - IT positioning at business level

An IT department has to be technology or management driven organization? This is a key question mark for many CEOs when confronted with the need to bring their own IT organizations to a different level of maturity. If he decides in favor of a technology driven organization then the IT department and its responsible person will be normally subordinated to someone at the Company Board level. In Europe the Finance Director is one of the first and common choices that many companies are following, as historically the Finance Director – CFO has been in charge of large company projects having high financial impact. If on the contrary the CEO decides that there is a clear need for the business organization to improve the overall IT performance then he will take the decision to bring his Head of IT to the Board level position. This dilemma differs between regions when comparing the number of companies in Europe having the IT responsible at the Company board level with oth...
Post a Comment
Read more

IT Metrics - How we should manage Information Technology

The management of IT must be based on three key elements; - Focusing on expertise - Ensuring business integration - Generating a new breed of innovative strategic thinking Nowadays the Time to Market concept is a major business requirement, not only for the Fast Consumer goods companies but for all the business that really desire to be succeed in a very competitive and changing environments, hence the need for the IT departments to organize their own resources focusing mainly on a primary activity or function. Doing that way we will increase efficiency (by reducing development and deployment required times) but also effectiveness (maximising the project benefits by reducing costs throughout the entire innovation funnel). Integration with the rest of the business in an intimate relationship is also key as it will increase business knoledge and sense of belonging. The first one is a fundamental enabler for IT organization to properly and timely traslate business requirem...
Post a Comment
Read more