THEORY AND PRACTICE

What to Do When Projects Fail

by Lowell Rapaport

If you hire a contractor to spearhead a major project and then find that the job is just not working out, wouldn't you switch to a different, more capable or less expensive consultant? Sadly, many companies won't, and they end up paying more for lower quality. Often, the decision maker simply can't admit to having made a mistake.

What can you do to make sure that you have the right IT contractor and that your projects will be successfully completed?

1. Involve employees at all levels in the decision making process. No one should carry the burden and responsibility of being the sole decision maker. Encourage your people to expose problems, not cover them up.

2. The best bid is not necessarily a function of price. Unfortunately, many companies believe that an expensive system necessarily offers the most features and best quality. You would not buy office supplies that way, why IT services? The variability between the cost and quality of IT projects varies wildly since many vendors have no set pricing and contracts are frequently negotiated in secret.

3. Finally, if an IT project fails to live up to expectations, subject it to intensive scrutiny. Can you live with the problems, or are they fatal? Replacing an expensive IT project may be less expensive than the long-term costs associated with keeping a faulty system in place. Don't cover up problems. Eventually they will be discovered at much greater cost than if your management was open about them in the first place.