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Writer, Consultant, Blogger and Cartoonist Phil Simon talks about his book
"Why New Systems Fail: Theory and Practice Collide
"
By William McKnight
McKnight: I looked for the short answer to the book’s title question and you did answer it by saying it’s “people.” What do people do that’s so counter to project success?
Simon: In short, they often make bad or “suboptimal” decisions. Many times people will protect their departments, areas, bosses, jobs, etc. at the risk of the entire project. Perhaps CXOs won’t staff the project properly because of some preconceived notion about project cost. Other times, issues are minimized or blame is inaccurately placed on the shoulders of consultants. People will ignore key issues because of internal politics. I could go on but the general point is this: people issues eat “technology” issues for lunch on these projects.
McKnight: Why did you title the book “Why New Systems Fail” when I think it really tells you how to succeed?
Simon: Thank you for saying that. I agree with you; I believe that the book is largely about making projects succeed. However, foolish is the person who refuses to recognize the abysmal success rate on IT projects and system implementations specifically.
I believe that the book’s title is short and descriptive. I tried to write a book that ultimately provides both general and specific advice for avoiding failure. Particularly in a recession, many organizations are going to get one bite at the apple. It’s important that they get projects right the first time.
McKnight: You’re sometimes a bit critical of software salespeople? Why?
Simon: I have a healthy skepticism for salespeople because I have seen many times promises made that, if not outright false, greatly oversimplified what an application can do. As a “delivery” consultant, I was in the tenuous position of explaining to someone that a feature is much more complicated than had been advertised.
Many—if not most—vendor salespeople are honest but, as you know, there’s a grey area when selling software. There’s an emphasis on “soft” (read: malleable). Given how many projects start off doomed to fail based on unrealistic promises about the product (and the time required to properly implement it), I believe that it’s better to be too skeptical than too naďve.
McKnight: In the book, you talk about different types of staffing arrangements for projects. How do companies choose the best arrangement for them?
Simon: There are many factors but I’ll keep it relatively brief here. Consider three scenarios. First, some organizations have a great deal of existing application-specific expertise may be able to get away with using fewer external consultants on a project. They may be able to use consultants in a milestone capacity.
Second, there are organizations with little or no existing application-specific expertise. While using consultants on an intermittent basis will save money, the risks typically exceed the rewards, often by considerable amounts. These organizations usually should employ consultants on a full-time basis.
Finally, while rare, there are organizations that attempt to do everything on their own sans consultants. This is almost always a recipe for disaster.
McKnight: You bring up reporting and data quality as important, yet overlooked, disciplines in the book, which I certainly appreciated. What’s your favorite example of one of these being a problem?
Simon: There are so many. The Petrucci case study is probably my favorite. Note that that isn’t the name of the organization; it’s a pseudonym. At the organization, management had a 25-year old legacy system and had never performed any data cleanup. The organization had no semblance of data governance. They never profiled their data prior to attempting to convert it. People erroneously assumed that all data could simply be migrated sans cleanup. Silly, right?
When I identified the specific records at issue in the legacy system (and there were thousands), the PM and key employees became enraged at IT and me. I was just pulling the data from their databases and yet, somehow, this was our fault. It underscores that business end users need to own their data. Making consultants or IT the scapegoat accomplishes nothing.
McKnight: Is there a relationship between this book and your second book, The Next Wave of Technologies?
Simon: Yes. They’re cousins. Organizations have a low batting average on mature, well-documented technologies, systems, and apps. Given that, what does that say about organizations’ efforts to effectively implement emerging or Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as cloud computing, SaaS, BI, mobility, etc? Why New Systems Fail looks at what has transpired on the last 20 years with respect to CRM, ERP, and other mature systems. The new book looks at the present and the future with an eye on avoiding the mistakes of the past.
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