There is no such thing as an “IT Project”, there are only business projects with IT solutions to business needs.
Projects are not run for the sake of information technology (IT) alone. IT departments do not run projects just because they want to, it is to support business.
Projects are run to add value to business, therefore need to focus on understanding business strategy, processes and culture. Projects need to determine what solution to implement to improve processes and culture inline with business strategy to add value.
In today’s digital age and industry 4.0 it is highly likely that IT will play a part in the business solution but that does not make it an IT project. If a project focuses on an IT solution alone it will most likely miss the organisational change management required to embed the solution into the organisation. When this happens the value to be added will be diminished as people will not adopt the solution. Similarly if a project is driven by implementing an IT solution as the “solution” to business process it could suffer the same problem.
The projects will be seen as failures because they did not add value to the business. This will be so even if they were delivered on time and within budget. This is the difference between project management success and project success.
Helpful Methods
Methods like AgilePM and Scrum have been developed to use the Agile Manifesto strategies of individual interactions and customer collaboration. This increases the interaction of business and business owners in the development of IT solutions compared to traditional waterfall approaches. This has helped to improve project success as the business has increased input to the solution which reduces resistance to change and increases adoption of the solution. However if the project is driven by the IT department and not owned by the business there are going to be issues with adoption of solution. This will be due to business viewing the project as being forced on them by IT which increases change resistance.
Conclusion
Projects need to be owned and driven by business and be seen as business improvement projects. This is to increase the probability of acceptance of change and success. Projects that are referred to as “IT projects” risk focusing on the IT solution and failing to deliver value. This is due to missing the objective of adding value to business. Therefore there is no such thing as an “IT Project”.
Written by Lachlan Mollison – definitely not an “IT project” manager
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