Lock, Stack and Bytes

In my opinion and experience, there is a very compelling reason (or reasons) behind all the horror stories about the high percentage of IT projects that fail. Johanna Rothman’s posting - How Much Rework Does Your Project Perform? - provides one of the answer. I am definitely not surprised by her assessment about the proportion of time that is just spent on rework in a typical project. My term for this “phenomenon” is “(Re)work in progress”. And by every account it is a very common occurrence in most IT projects. Companies can adopt numerous, fundamental approaches to overcome this problem. But this has to be complemented with a more lasting solution to the problem.

rework accounts for somewhere between 75% and 80% of a “normal” project’s time…

In my opinion, the main problem lies in focusing too much on the end product and too less on the process that takes us to that end product. Yes, I am talking something on the lines of CMM (Capability Maturity Model) for software development that describes the principles and practices underlying software process maturity. Of course, companies whose core competencies are not software products and services would not (and should not) invest the time and money to achieve CMM levels for their small IT or IS departments. However, in this age of global competition, efficient business/operational processes hold the key to a business organization’s ability to survive and thrive. In the absence of well-defined processes for managing in-house projects (IT or others), companies are unwittingly bleeding themselves of precious resources.

Every time a project is undertaken, there is widespread reinventing-the-wheel. It’s high time that managers and decision-makers ask themselves: What happened to the company’s software assets used in the last project? Can’t we use them again? Where is the documentation for the projects done till date? Where is the knowledge base? Where are the APIs? Where are the reusable components? Well-thought out project/product management processes can go a long way in addressing some (if not all) of the questions raised above.

- Rajesh