When your IT projects consistently go over budget, past due, and lack in quality, it’s natural to assume the Project Manager is to blame. When return on investment and performance improvements from IT projects don’t live up to your expectations, you probably assume it’s the IT department’s fault.

In the vast majority of cases, however, both assumptions would be wrong.

Uncertainty Breeds Certain Failure

There’s a saying that goes, “We don’t plan to fail; we fail to plan.” Yet even before the planning stage, many organizations fail. They fail to define desired outcomes and project intent. They fail to identify the improvements that a correctly implemented project will bring about. In particular, they fail to describe how success itself will be evaluated and measured. And that spells almost certain failure for the entire project.

As a Six Sigma Black Belt, I’m obsessed with finding the root causes of problems and poor results. After many years of managing projects and advising others, I’ve concluded that the single most common cause of poor project delivery occurs not during a project but before a project manager or a single resource is ever assigned.

Too often, a company buys into a solution before it has identified the problem it hopes to solve or defined, in measurable terms, what it aims to achieve. Managers approve budgets, set schedules, and assign resources before establishing their objectives, success measures, and goals. On occasion, an ingenious project manager can help a sponsor “back into” a set of objectives for the solution already chosen - a case of shooting first and calling whatever you hit the target. But sadly - and all too often - a project is reduced to merely installing a system or set of features rather than delivering quantifiable improvements or a return on investment.

Lacking clearly defined outcomes and measurable objectives, a project team can’t design the best solution and implementation. Consider the case of Henry Ford; who wanted to “democratize the automobile”. He proclaimed that everyone would be able to afford and have a car. He wanted to build hundreds more cars at a much lower cost. It meant he needed to reduce the time to build a car by 90%. Without this key information, it’s not at all obvious that the solution design had to be innovative or that it required Ford to offer few options and only one paint color. But because Henry Ford clearly defined the desired outcome and measurable objectives before he began, he created the Model T and revolutionized auto making.

Revolutionize Your Results

Setting SMART goals establishes criteria for effective decision making. It clarifies what is essential versus nice-to-have or simply out of scope. When project objectives are vague, stakeholders with problems of their own will choose different interpretations and form conflicting opinions about what should be in scope. Inevitably, stakeholders, technical architects, and systems engineers introduce new requirements and changes to existing requirements. In an attempt to keep everyone happy, the project manager will accommodate most of the additional requests, thereby expanding the work, distracting and diluting the resources, and ultimately diminishing project benefits. Almost imperceptibly the gradual accumulation of unforeseen and/or unintended requirements progressively add to project scope, complexity, costs, and delays. Don’t risk the success of your project; always begin with a clearly defined outcome and SMART goals.

Chris Foley is CEO/Consultant of SMART Outcome, LLC a Business Process and Six Sigma consultancy focused on helping clients improve their bottom-line results through strategic goal setting, balanced scorecards, portfolio management and the “Magic of Metrics”. http://www.smartoutcome.com

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/03/17/what-is-an-it-strategy-and-do-you-have-one/