Disappointment in IT: still seven versions of the truth, apparently. But there is a solution.


After 15 years of consulting and technical engagements in the first half of my career (up to around 2002), it seemed to me that a key reason for high levels of IT failures in many organisations was that there were a number of competing visions (or versions) of the truth when it came to IT. Usually seven. And they were:

1. What the business actually needed
2. What business people thought they wanted
3. What they told the IT people they wanted (because they didn’t know how to ask)
4. What the IT people understood from what the business people said
5. What the IT people thought the business really needed
6. What the IT people could actually do with the available technologies and their skill sets
7. What the IT industry thought they should have (and therefore sold them)

By the time these seven different views produce their results:

1. The business didn’t get what it thought it was going to get
2. The requirements had probably changed anyway, and
3. Everyone blamed it on IT

This held true in pretty much every industry sector (including the public sector), and many research studies done at that time showed that around half of all IT projects ended in, at minimum, disappointment at the outcome and a mismatch with what the business needed.

The good news is that the situation improved somewhat over the following 15 years up to the present, with more business-savvy CIOs, smaller IT departments, less build and more services buy, agile development, and so on.

But talking to a small group of CEOs recently in London about the business opportunities in IoT and associated data, every one of those present talked of difficulties within the past two years caused by IT delays, missteps, outright failures, and other IT-related concerns.  In most cases, the stories were pretty familiar and the outcome the same: damaged trust in their digital infrastructures.

More worryingly, there was quite a lot of concern about the potential for difficulties as large-scale IoT and AI projects start to land, introducing more automation into their businesses (and therefore, in their eyes, less human oversight).  Given the growing importance of such technologies in businesses of all kinds, this is a pretty startling problem.

The odd thing is that there are five steps that anyone can take that provide a basis for more successful IT projects.  I started outlining them for clients 15 years ago, and they still hold true:

1. Understand the difference between the vision (coming from the business), the strategy to achieve the desired outcomes that follows (ditto), tactical approaches (CIO/manager), and execution (technical)
2. Ensure you have clearly stated progressive outcomes for each stage of the project, a clear definition of success, and clarity over who is responsible for delivering it
3. Don’t allow mission creep during project execution; if additions/changes are necessary, review and adjust only at gating stages
4. Allocate realistic timescales and budgets, and stick to them
5. Keep ‘the business’ fully involved and bought into the process at every stage, to ensure buy-in and that requirements haven’t changed

Hardly rocket science I know, but despite being relatively simple (simplistic even), it still seems to be difficult for many organisations to follow them. Achieving consistent success requires rather more than five steps (which is why consultants continue to make a living) but if you can’t say you have these five ticked off at a minimum, you’re going to struggle.  And who wants to keep being disappointed?