Tech Project Success - The Art vs The Science

Scope creep, cost overruns, changing timelines and ultimately, project failure! Words that organisations dread become the primary reasons for budget blowouts and overspend. Roles and responsibilities were not clear, the objectives and timelines were unrealistic, the vendor didn't understand the requirements, or the one I've heard the most, it was poor project and capacity planning. Tech projects can go from green to red very quickly, especially during a robust phase of testing. If the project has created a sense of shock by suddenly becoming red, all the independent project reviews and increased budgets can rarely overturn the reputation lost in the process.

Clear communication becomes the key ingredient for tech project success

Having worked on numerous different technology projects, I have interestingly seen projects that have shifted far away from the baseline but still considered a success, whilst other projects that have a very small shift due to legitimate reasons still be regarded as a failure. This perception from executives and sponsors is intriguing and begs the question, what is the best way to manage the perception of tech project success? Success itself can be managed by a strict criterion with clear measurable outcomes, but what if the journey to attain those outcomes has been full of time extensions, cost variances and ultimately, unwanted surprises?

Tech project management is an art as much as a science! For the majority of projects, success doesn't necessarily lie in reduced change requests but setting the right expectations upfront of when and why changes might be required. For example, a project might have a critical and complicated requirement involving a number of integrations with several data rules. Work could be done in a development environment and then deployed into a test environment, but small differences between the environments could result in a number of failed test scripts. Yes granted that robust environment management processes should mitigate this risk. However, the complexities of keeping environments completely in-sync, especially when operating at speed with multiple systems, are high. This commonly results in extended testing timelines whilst performing RCAs on the issue. The success criteria for high priority requirements that are intricate and have a high user experience impact are also stricter. The unknowns and variabilities are therefore difficult to forecast, and rarely can timelines and budgets be set to cater for every possible shift. Whilst operating under a project management framework with clear stage gates and processes to constantly monitor project viability is essential, even with the most robust of frameworks, estimating the potential impact of tech project risks and issues can be extremely difficult.

In these circumstances, expectation management and communication become the most vital skills that can ensure the project is still considered successful. Educating stakeholders on where shifts might occur, what mitigations have been put in place to try to avoid delays but ultimately, that there might be some shift before the cone of uncertainty is reduced becomes crucial. The Project Manager has an important role in this, but as more tech programs are sponsored outside of IT, with enablement and tech requirement delivery sitting in IT (whether this is the right model is open to debate), it becomes essential that the core IT team has the ability to articulate and influence stakeholders in the organisation. This is particularly imperative for senior IT professionals in the team who would be privy to the project control group and/ or steering committee meetings. These individuals need to have some Project Management knowledge and be able to express the technical challenges of the project in clear, concise and easily understandable terms.

Whilst the science of project management and delivery is well researched with numerous training programs on varying processes and methodologies readily available, the more artistic, human centric and softer skills often get missed. Tech professionals, including but not limited to developers and test analysts, are commonly armed with excellent technical skills. These are ordinarily built through numerous hours in front of a computer coding to a brief collected in a cross-border sprint meeting via Teams or Zoom. They however often need additional support to be in a position of influence and can go into managerial roles without the necessary leadership training required to succeed. Yes agreed that this is a major generalisation, but the rate of tech project failure due to poor communication, false expectations, or missed escalations cannot be ignored. IT teams sometimes attribute this to non-IT senior executives having a poor understanding of tech project delivery challenges, but arguably the responsibility of educating the organisation on these processes also lives with the IT team. This isn't a reflection of the IT team itself but the lack of training that might be available to them. It is something that can act as a double edge sword, cutting through IT teams at the speed of light when activities do not go according to plan. It is therefore essential to provide adequate training for them to be able to articulate, influence and educate, setting them up for success and minimising the risk of failure.

AQUTAS offers services proven to elevate technology professionals and uplift team performance, culture and engagement. Contact AQUTAS on info@aqutas.com.au for more information.