1. Ahsan Rahi, PMP rahi@ieee.orgrahi@ieee.org | http://AhsanRahi.com/ South Texas College Information Technology Forum, December 4 th, 2009 © All Contents Copyright 2009 by Ahsan Rahi, except where attributed.

2. My Background  Academic background in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science  Nineteen years experience primarily in Oil & Gas industry (employee & consultant)  Work experience focused on enterprise software development, project & operations management  large technology & process initiatives  Outsourcing of company’s software development  Project Management cultural change  Global Initiative to improve Service Quality

3. A Long, Long, Time Ago, In a Company Not So Far Away… The Management Review

4. Today’s Talk  What does it take to deliver successful IT projects?  We’ll talk about what are considered “soft skills” but often have a larger impact on outcome than the technical skills  Why?  Evolution of IT within the organization  Pendulum shift from centralized->decentralized  Shift in reporting / commoditization  BUT THE MAIN REASON is that we continue to fail….

5. Hurricane Rita Each iteration provides new information and takes us closer to the end vision. Uncertainty remains, and the shape of the cone is proportional. Why can’t we do the same in IT? Thanks to Todd Little, Landmark Graphics Corp.

6. Case Study for Today’s Talk  The Avance Project: Collaboration & project management system for project & program management of Oil & Gas projects  Increase information sharing across projects  Enable program tracking & management  Complementary to remote operations support center  Target Userbase: Very large skills & geographic diversity  New technology (not a sustaining or maintenance project)  Context  IPM business unit of Largest Oil & Gas service company  Current state: no program level information, manual project status, PM Support group helped projects fill out standardized templates.  Hopefully shed some light on deployment considerations for Collaboration projects – the new wave!

7. Vision of the Avance Pilot Project Collaboration Culture Consistent Practices (Processes & Standards) Avance (Collaboration) Avance (Project Management) Scope of Avance Initiative

8. Information lifespan Phone IM EMail Groove Document Management System Portal Websites Productivity docs

9. What is Alignment  The degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business and expends its resources, pursues projects, and provides information consistent with them  Primary challenge in delivering new technology to businesses today, but don’t take my word for it…

10. Project Outcomes Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim Johnson, CIO.com, ‘How to Spot a Failing Project’

11. Features & Functionality Delivered Always or Often Used: 20% Never or Rarely Used: 64% Standish Group Study, reported by CEO Jim Johnson

12. IT Hope vs. Reality Bain Annual Management Survey (n=359)

13. Factors influencing failure  PROJECT UNDERSTANDING  Misalignment in the context of the project  Wrong definition of success (IT-centric KPI’s)  BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT  IT PM insulated from company dynamics  Impact of proper change management is ignored  PEOPLE  Domain knowledge vs. IT Expertise  Increasing velocity of user expectations

14. Project Understanding: Complexity  Context-Adaptive PM Assessment: Techniques typically needed to manage the uncertainty of a project (risks as well as opportunities) are distinct and often quite different from the strategies to manage its complexity  Complexity of a project is a function of its organizational, logistical, and engineering structures and attributes are chosen to capture the critical structural factors in the above categories.  Uncertainty of a project on the other hand refers to the risks – known and unknown – associated with the project. Context-Adaptive Project Management: A Scoring Model for Assessing Project Complexity and Uncertainty

15. Outcome of Single-Project Assessment Pre-sales Technical Team Pre-sales Business Team Technical Project Team

16. Application to Portfolio Management

17. Project Understanding: Metrics  Metrics to measure success are often IT- oriented e.g.  Number of users  Number of hits per day  Number of support calls; ART  ROI: Amount of personnel time saved vs. manual processes  Business metric:  Rig NPT saved (file)file  Q: Are there any good IT measures for a collaboration project?

18. Environment: IT Insulated from External Dynamics  Collaboration type projects often require large- scale participation in order to be useful to the target community.  Therefore can’t follow the traditional IT deployment model of pilot -> analyze -> full deployment  Limited resources/funding & - most often – mgmt reluctance to deploy without piloting means we have to find a way to segment the target population  Use techniques such as Technology Adoption Lifecycle to segment target population…

19. Analyze via Influence Diagram

20. Segment Your Users  Technology Adoption Lifecycle  Focus on one group at a time – chasm b/w EA & EM! Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore

21. Merged Approach: Your Roadmap

22. ENVIRONMENT: Change Management 1. People will alter their mind-sets only if they see the point of the change and agree with it enough to give it a try 2. The surrounding structures - reward and recognition systems, etc. - must be aligned with the desired new behavior 3. Employees must have the training and tools to do what is asked of them 4. Finally, employees must see people they respect modeling the new behaviors actively and consistently Psychology of Change Management, McKinsey

23. PEOPLE  IT, like other disciplines, evaluates employees based on development in IT technical skills –  However IT is more like a basic science (math, etc) - of limited use without context

24. Conclusion  IT is process-based; Business is outcome- based  Clearly established IT Steering Committee’s managing to business outcomes  Necessity for IT folks to specialize in particular domains