Tom Korbecki presents two high-level checklists that can help you forge a path to your project’s success. How many items can you check in the succeed column?
Why Projects Fail
- Lack of top management support
- Support for the CIO is not enough, must also have CEO and top executive support.
- Lack of Direction
- Lack of ownership by the business and participation in the project
- Unrealistic time frame
- Not enough time to build business process improvements
- Not enough time for testing
- Underestimating effort to test internal and external interfaces
- Implementation budget
- Companies tie their hands by underfunding the efforts and/or limiting the scope through impractical project schedules.
- Tier 1 packages such as Oracle should be budgeted on the upper end due to the implementation complexity and the size of the company.
- Internal resistance by either IT or the business to leave legacy software.
- ERP packages typically are developed around best practices. Software often fails to achieve it’s promise due to the reluctance to change by people who have a vested interest in the existing process or software.
- Failed to capture 100% of the requirements during the discovery phase
- Lack of training and education
- Underestimating this effort
- Value of data
- Make sure data converted is accurate.
Why Projects Succeed
- Partnership between implementers and stakeholders
- Both groups gain by a successful implementation
- Adequate resources for the project
- No surprise that the same people who run functional area are also the ones essential for the success of the implementation.
- Back fill key personnel.
- Project Management
- The magnitude of an ERP implementation requires an aggressive and structured project management process.
- Oracle project manager who understands the methodology and manages the risks of the project which impact time, quality and costs.
- Project organization structure
- Quick response for decision making and issue management
- Ensure project has a sufficient budget
- If budgets are not sufficient to support deadlines, project resources are under constant pressure and take shortcuts.
- Ultimately, morale disintegrates along with the quality of work.
- Functional ownership of the project
- Sense of ownership by the business increases the chances of success
- Project approach reflects task dependencies
- Project manager ensures that team does not start next task until its pre-requisite is completed successfully.
- Schedules are built to allow adequate time to complete a task.
- Business process redesign
- Match business processes with new software
- Software modifications only when business processes that differentiates you in the marketplace are not supported by the software.