The importance of functional gap analysis to project success: A personal experience

I was recently involved in the preliminary stages of a IT project ,at  large organization,  that aimed to replace the central information sharing and document archiving system. The current system was a 10 plus year old mishmash of interdependent modules that were developed in house to meet the needs and demands of various stakeholders. The system no doubt needed to be replaced; the challenging question was what new system would provided the same level of functionality and integration with current business processes.

Despite the obvious challenge in finding an appropriate replacement system, upper management, due to financial pressures and politics, committed themselves to an off the shelf solution designed by an American vendor without conducting a  functional gap analysis in co-ordination with the major stakeholder.  The scope of the system replacement project was therefore limited to; getting major stakeholders to support the proposed change, working with the selected vendor to implement the system and pre-launch training.

The omitted functional gap analysis was a sure recipe for failure. The project planning stage, of which i was part, uncovered several intractable challenges the implementation project will be facing due to the omitted functional gap analysis. The standard answer to each new uncovered challenge quickly became "  well we are already committed to the new system". However, as the project planning progressed and more challenges were uncovered an unspoken consensus slowly emerged; the planned implementation will run into significant problems and the selected system will most likely not meet the needs and demands of its  users. In my estimation, this state of affairs were a direct consequence of the failure to conduct a proper functional gap analysis before selecting the replacement system.

I suspect that the situation I encountered is not uncommon. I imagine that economic pressures or the lure of the latest IT tool or fad, for example cloud computing,  frequently motivates managers to commit similar errors in judgement that ultimately jeopardizes project success.

In the interest of exploring my suspicion further, I will be happy to hear from other members of the class who had had similar project experience.

Management Innovation for IT project managers

Management Innovation for IT project managers [1]

IT projects compared to other types of projects are characterized with uniqueness, emergency, one shot, short term and uncertainty. For this reason, to get successful results it is very important to find and solve relevant problems and innovation in project management plays an important role in this regard. This role is very critical in both planning and implementing the projects. As a result it is very essential for the IT project management to be seen as a system.  Management innovation enables project managers to make all the factors in the project interact effectively and efficiently with each other to create synergy.

One of the reasons for high percentage of failure in IT projects goes back to lack of clear understanding about project manager’s role and his or her required skills. These skills are not necessarily limited to technical sets but are even more related to managerial sets. To use these skills the main question is to know how IT project managers can innovate in their project management methods. Clearly speaking the more versatile a project manager the more successful he or she and as a result the more efficient the project. Here come managerial skills and great personality even before IT technical knowledge. A competent project manager has great communication skills, strong leadership, love of work, clear vision, excellent team building capabilities, structure, alignment and discipline. He or she is interested in every one in the team, the individual needs and values, opinion, feelings and ideas. He or she also invests in motivating every one, creating excitement, making it fun, showing the end point to the team and keeping the team focused on that. A strong project manager needs to keep her or his relations with all the stakeholders in the project, the managers, the client and the team members alive and active. Some of the major problems from the perspective of project management are lack of communication with the client, passive communication with the management and sole attention to the project team members’ performance. Separating clients, management and team members could be the main source of unsuccessful results in executing the projects. But what are the things can be done to enhance the efficiency of project management? It seems that giving regular visits to the client to know about the requirements and their changes in time, flexible communicating with the management and paying attention to all aspects of the team such as recruiting, informing, communicating, atmosphere creating and proper activity distributing  as well as cross cultural managing can help a lot in this regard. All these factors enable the project manager to be effective for the needs of the stakeholders to be met. Using these methods properly needs the project managers to be innovative and versatile.

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[1] Management Innovation of IT Project Managers, by Shuangqin Liu, Business School, Hohai University, Nanjing & Business School Lianyungang Technical College,  ianyungang, China.

2010 3rd International Conference on Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering