Project Success Assurance
In IntelliCo Solutions we say that well-managed projects fail very early, while poorly managed projects fail on the delivery date.
Often, a critical issue - an unforeseen event or a new piece of information - will dictate that a project has to be seriously reshaped. The business environment may have changed, or a new piece of legislation may have placed constraints on the project approach, or a key department may have agreed on a strategy conflicting with project objectives. Even so, many a project will continue, regardless, to plod along on its initially set course, incurring millions in costs that no longer add value to the company.
Do you know how long does it take, on average, between a critical issue appearing on one of your projects, and you receiving a proper project impact assessment? If you are not sure, or if you think it could be months, then you are not too far from the norm seen in our experience. However, each day of delay in responding to critical project issues could lead to significant non-value adding expenditures, that you will be challenged on later on, if and when the project fails.
Fortunately, we do not have to accept this situation any more. For a long time, IT value management methodologies such as ITIL or COBIT, combined with project management methodologies such as PRINCE 2 and PMBOK have given us very good best practices that theoretically will always guarantee project success, or at least an immediate reaction to critical issues.
So, why are these methodologies not adopted more fully?
The difficulty faced by many organizations is in the practical implementation of these methodologies, which in their full form are extremely intimidating and often highly bureaucratic. Indeed, in our pragmatic experience we discovered that 80% of the impact of these methodologies lies in just 20% of the listed practices. Getting your project success rate to 80% may not be perfect, but it is still a great leap from the 50-60% where you are likely to be today.
Of course, the trick lies in exactly which 20% to implement. We at IntelliCo Solutions are experts in that part. If you are looking at which methodology to implement, we can work with you to custom-tailor a lightweight project methodology that is right for you, is easily implementable, reduces your admin overheads, and still gets your project success rates dramatically. Even if you have an existing project methodology in place, we can review, fine-tune and trim it down to ensure that you are not spending unnecessary time on admin.
Last but not least, remember that project that you are often worrying about? Every CIO has at least one of them at a time. Why not let us take a look under the hood? After implementing a customized, three-day project review, we can give you a project health check report. Even better, to introduce ourselves, we can offer the first review on a "no cure - no pay" guarantee - you pay only if you think the results of the review added value.
To apply for this guarantee, contact us at partners@intellico-solutions.com