5 Steps To Avoid IT Project Failures

My debut column for InformationWeek exposed some big, hairy reasons IT projects fail. It should comfort you to know that I don't pretend to have all the answers, or at least I won't until I'm trying to sell you something. So instead of answers, let's focus on the direction in which we need to walk to get to that shining goal on the horizon -- not the "city upon the hill" that Reagan and JFK spoke about, but the nondescript office park at its center.

1. Stay clear of cheese. Don't get me wrong. I love the smell of cheese. My favorite is a seasonal offering from Vermont that contains horseradish. But one smell I can't stand is the ingratiating stench of management consultants who prey on the vanities of the elderly by saying things like "IT project success demands that you get support from senior management."

If you're in that kind of company, then you're already a lost cause. And not just because you hire a fleet of consultants to sell you cheese and another fleet to tell you who moved it.

You're lost because in most organizations "senior management" is code for those random few whose gut-based decisions have been right in the past. Careers advanced by lottery. Because if anything deserves the warning that "past performance does not predict future returns," it's senior management, not mutual funds.

The older I get, the more I wish that there were some folksy home remedy for it, like rubbing oatmeal on your elbow. But for those of us genuinely interested in transforming our orgs, step one is to change the talent that drives it.

And I do not mean that it's time to "upgrade your talent" -- a very cheesy senior management way of thinking. Rather, it's time to rethink the values that define leadership, to rethink who deserves the corner office or whether there should even be a corner office.

It's time to focus on real values -- not the generic, client-centric drivel that C-level execs feel compelled to publish. "We put clients first!" Really? And what about your competitors? I suppose their clients come third or fourth.

Here's what I mean by real values. We need to reward humility and selfless service and call out shameless self-promotion. We need to reward the brave instead of those with bravado. And in IT especially, it's time to value engineers and engineering experience over softer skills.

I'll be honest. Some of the best engineers I know have the social skills of pro wrestlers. God gives and takes. But if you lock 10 engineers into a conference room, they don't need someone with softer skills to facilitate their discussions. The conference room doesn't turn into that nameless island in "Lord of the Flies." No. Shit gets done.

I keep a copy of that 1978 Microsoft group photo on my desk. I was 10 at the time, so I'm not in it. It just keeps me humble. None of them is wearing a Six Sigma green belt. If they're wearing any belt at all, it's to hold their +5 sword of engineering.

They're my heroes, the bearded ones, the early and unknowing pioneers of ironic mustaches. And until your IT shop starts to fill with them -- or people who admire them -- your transformation will remain hollow.

2. Work on your cardio. When I was a 15-year-old nerdling, I surreptitiously decided that I wanted to be a weightlifter -- a superhero actually -- but I'd start by lifting weights. I shadowed a muscle-bound stranger at the gym, following him from machine to machine, doing as many reps as he did. I was pretty proud of myself until I passed out -- literally. The experience saved me the cost of a cape.

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I see the challenge of getting ROI right in the same light. We all need to create a data-driven culture (organizational muscles), but the only thing vendors sell are magical BI tools (a gym). Their sales pitches are predictable: They point to edge cases where some muscleheads (data scientists) do something amazing with their tool. "These dashboards actually cure cancer! Cancer!"

But when you ask the vendor for a training regimen (an internal competency), they instead teach you how to use the equipment. The result is a very expensive, vacant gym. And an org with the lung capacity of the Marlboro man.

If you take what you think is the clever path, you hire yourself a couple of weightlifters to lead the way: muscle-bound strangers who know-but-can't-teach or lift-but-can't-lead. And they ultimately inspire your nerdlings to pass out.

If you're lucky, you get a coach that understands the complexities of data science and totally gets your business context. But then you wake up, having had a business leader's equivalent of a flying dream. Beautiful, wasn't it? Business transformation by Xanax.

The more practical path is to recognize that data science needs to be a core competency in every nook and cranny of your organization. If the term "data scientist" is something you relegate to your BI team, you're wasting their time and your money. If you remember only one thing from this column, know that creating and consuming actionable information requires the same skills. In financial services, for instance, there's little point to having quants on the front lines if the leadership lacks the same competencies.

And the skill doesn't just need to travel up the management chain or be focused in your profit centers. Supporting functions from marketing to vendor management need to challenge themselves to let the data drive. Even bastions of unstructured data such as legal and compliance -- places where the word "opinion" regularly gets recast to mean "fact" -- have to rethink their approach.

Before you drink the Kool-Aid, though, recognize that letting data drive decisions will disrupt your organization. Big time. If for no other reason than the challenge it poses to the established authorities in your org: your senior management (see section 1).

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