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What To Do When Your IT Project Is Late, Over Budget, andLooks Like It’s Never Going To Work Here’s a scary statistic. According to four prominent research firms, only around 20% of all IT projects are finished in a timely manner. By “timely” the researchers mean without loss of quality or being over budget. They go on to say the average project runs approximately 200 percent late, roughly 200 percent over budget, and contains only 2/3 of the original functionality. Failure is the norm in the IT industry. But why? And more importantly, how do we fix it? There must be a way to dissect the problem, and create a solution to the diagnosis of “doomed failure.” Trust me, there is! Top 7 Problems and Their Solutions Let’s take a look at the top 7 reasons IT projects are late or over budget. Then I’ll show you some proven solutions taken straight from the trenches. 1. Not Enough Time Whether it’s a misunderstanding of the complexity of computer system designs or some other reason, many times little time is devoted to gathering the necessary data. Because this is one of the first steps in the process, when adequate time isn’t given to data collection, everything else suffers. Likewise, enough time is rarely allotted to creating a good design. While the planning stage may not offer the excitement that development does, it is equally, if not more, important. Lack of planning in the design phase almost always leads to ongoing changes during the development phase. When this happens, budget dollars and man-hours are eaten away. SOLUTION: Give it more time. This vital step must be given due consideration. Adjust your schedule as needed, and you’ll find the rest of the process goes much smoother. Yes, you have to make it to market before your competition. But if you make it to market and your product is filled with bugs, what do you get? A pile of returns and complaints, and a bad reputation. 2. Open the Lines of Communication It sounds like a cliché, but communication is absolutely vital to the success of any project. The communication between the development team and the users, and also the communication inside the development team must be crystal clear. Does everyone understand you? Do they know exactly what’s expected of them or have you assumed they know? Do they communicate well with each other? With users? With other departments? SOLUTION: Identify communication breakdowns now. These can only lead to confusion and complications down the road. Never assume that everyone understands. Take just a little extra time to create an environment that is destined to produce a product on time and under budget. 3. Testing a New Program in the Production Server Testing in the production server leads to a breach of security, which can lead to “immediate” release without testing which can ultimately disrupt the production environment. SOLUTION: There should be specific protocol setup for security and quality control considerations for new program tests. 4. Inadequate Testing Experience and studies show that testing is almost always pushed to the end of the development cycle. Since the development is usually bad, the testers run out of time. The result? Running over schedule and over budget. Not to mention the release of an inadequate product. SOLUTION: Remember problem #1? Ditto! Yes, you have to make it to market before your competition. But if you make it to market and your product is filled with bugs, what do you get? A pile of returns and complaints, and a bad reputation. Test all the way through the process, and you’ll save a lot of time in the end. 5. Pressing the Budget Too Tight When you have unrealistic goals for a project’s budget to start with, chaos is bound to set in. Departments fall behind, resources are slow to arrive, and - because of budget constraints - the project, once again, runs off the road. SOLUTION: Create an accurate budget. Also, outline ways to develop better upfront planning of the resources. 6. Never/Rarely Checking the Progress of the Project As the project goes along, the unexpected happens. Various people implement their ideas as to how to fix these challenges and - when launch day comes - you’re surprised with an entire list of challenges that need your immediate attention. SOLUTION: Define “checkpoints” throughout the project. Give attention to those things that need to be adjusted along the way, even if they cause minor delays. Fixing them now, rather than later, will take less time overall. 7. Not Reviewing Existing Standards Do most or all of your projects run late and over budget? Do you keep the same standards in place time after time? How’s that working for you? If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you get. Let’s face it… things change, and if you want to keep pace, you have to change, too. SOLUTION: Take time to review the standards used for each and every project. Keep a running list of what worked, what didn’t, and how to do it better next time. The next time your IT project is late, over budget, and looks like it is never going to work, review this list again. Make the necessary adjustments, and you’ll be downright amazed at the difference! Frank Schmidt is a seasoned Management Consultant. Over the past 12 years he has worked with multiple Fortune 500 companies to assist other managers improve success ratios and performance within their organizations. Visit his site http://www.geniusone.com today for additional details. Six powerful ways to find link targetsFinding quality sites to target is at the heart of any effective linking strategy. ‘Quality sites’ are not the ones that are easiest to get links from but those that will drive most relevant traffic to your site. To find quality sites, you`ve got to do methodical research before you start - lots of it. Before you beginAdvert: Training coursesWant to learn more about about usability, accessibility or CSS? Why not come on one of our excellent training courses:
Courses are held every month in London and are taught by usability and accessibility professionals. Make sure you bookmark interesting sites immediately and at the end of each research session sort your bookmarks into categories - do not under any circumstances leave it until later. Get to know how to organise your bookmarks in Internet Explorer or use a handy bookmark program like Acqurl. When you do find an interesting site do a backwards link search on Google. Say you`re looking for ezine sites and come across Zinos. Press the backward links button on the Google Toolbar or do a search for ‘link:http://www.zinos.com’. Either method returns about 346 web pages that link to Zinos. Scan through these quickly - about 10 seconds per page and on page 16 (under 3 minutes) there`s a link to a site that has compiled a list of over 40 sites like Zinos. So now that you`re ready to begin here are six powerful ways to identify quality sites: 1. Mine your referrer logsCheck your referrer logs every day (if you don`t know how then check with your ISP). Cut and paste that day`s referring websites into an Excel spreadsheet, then review once a month. Take the sites that refer most traffic and do a backwards link search looking for similar sites that you could also approach. 2. Find out who links to your competitorsLogic says that if sites link to your competitors, they could also link to you. But don`t stop at just sending ‘me too’ link requests. Look carefully at the sites that link to your competitors. What market sectors do they come from? Are there any surprises? Is there a niche market that you haven`t thought about. Again for every useful site do a backwards link search. 3. Drill down through directoriesStart with DMOZ, Yahoo and Looksmart. Look specifically for information sites or industry specific directories. Be comprehensive and explore as many relevant categories as you can. 4. Scan the blogsSearch engines love blogs because they are full of fresh content and extensive links. They`re useful for linking because:
One of the best places to look is DayPop, a specialized search engine that crawls more than 59,000 news sites, weblogs and RSS feeds at least once a day (and some once every 3 hours). You can find more blog search engines in The Search Engine Journal. 5. Look for ezinesEzines generally provide more in-depth content than blogs and are published less often. Cumuli Ezine Finder and EzineDepot are reasonably good ezine directories. You can also do a Google search so if you`re looking for ezines on photography you can just enter the search term, ‘photography ezines’. 6. Cultivate journalistsGet to know the traditional media in your market sector and watch what they do online. Start to keep a record of key journalists and the type of stories they cover. Do some searches on Google News - and note the latest news in your industry. If you find this useful you can also sign-up for Google`s news alert service. Get going!This methodical approach takes time but results in a long list of highly relevant link targets and an important overview of your market online. Now you`ve got the list, go get the links. This article was written by Ken McGaffin. Ken is author of The Linking Matters Report and provides training and consultancy in link building and online marketing. What next?
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