Failed processing of child maintenance payments (The Child Support Agency), tax-credit processing failures (Inland Revenue), serious delays in processing passport applications (the UK Passport Agency), failure of the National Insurance Fund Recording System (Contributions Agency), vast cost overruns and other problems in developing new IT systems for Magistrates' Courts (the Libra Project). It appears to make little difference whether projects are public or private sector with only around 16% of surveyed projects in the UK being successful compared to the US' 34% (source: Royal Academy of Engineering & British Computer Society). There are also initiatives like UK eUniversities Worldwide which some commentators would lead us to believe will soon be consumed by this particular fire. But is any of this pain avoidable? The answer is 'probably', but we have to be prepared to learn the lessons from the past … sometimes the recent past. Read on! What can we learn from the experience of other big projects?
The Committee of Public Accounts Reports and Publications web site doesn't sound like an exciting place to spend a sunny day, but it's a gold mine for those interested in why big projects, particularly IT projects, fail. For example, it's only a confident and powerful Parliamentary committee who in their report on the cost over-runs and contractor failures in the Libra Project who could offer the starkly meaningful:
- “This is one of the worst PFI deals that we have seen.”
- “Where contractors are not delivering what is required of them, departments should be prepared to terminate contracts.”
The same committee when reporting on the aborted Benefits Payment Card Project wrote:
- “When projects go wrong, management should face up to the prospect of failure and take prompt decisions to avoid abortive costs.”
- “While various parties identified many of the risks at various stages, they underestimated the difficulty of attempting to tackle a huge and complex project … in one exercise using relatively untried PFI arrangements. There were also many basic project management failures …”
- “The improved arrangements developed by the Treasury, the Central IT Unit and the Office of Government Commerce for managing PFI and IT Projects should go a long way to preventing similar failures in future. For example, similar projects would in future be broken down into more manageable modules and would be subject to independent reviews at key stages.”
A useful summary of many of these and other issues can be found in the National Audit Office (NAO) article Lessons from the Public Accounts Committee’s examination of 25 projects in which David Davies, the then Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, identifies the following as key risk factors.
- “deficiencies in exercising real leadership and responsibility”
- “the application of a 'big-bang' approach rather than a lower risk phased development”
- “short sighted dealings with suppliers.”
The NAO also offers the pithy Tips for managing risk in IT projects which includes:
- “Pay special attention to the interaction between the new system and those expected to use it, and take into account users' views on the practicability and usability of the new system.”
- “… consider carefully the scale and complexity of projects which are too ambitious to undertake in one go. This is particularly important if a project connects with the business operations of other parties, or depends on the development of IT undertaken by other parties.”
- “Adequate testing of any new system before committing to live operation … Pilot tests of any new system which is critical to business performance should be on a limited scale so that any shortcomings do not have a major impact on service delivery.”
Or, for those who want the full report of the above, there's Supporting Innovation: Managing Risk in Government Departments.
Another useful source for anyone wanting a primer on what can go wrong with major IT projects or alternatively to put it another way, 'how to improve your chances of getting it right' is the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology's report on Government IT projects (July 2003). POST offers a two page summary or a thirty page full report (both PDF unfortunately). The POST site states:
“Government departments have 100 major IT projects underway with a total value of £10 billion. However, over the past five years, IT difficulties have affected, among others, the Criminal Records Bureau, Inland Revenue, National Air Traffic Services and the Department for Work and Pensions. The government has a target for making all services available electronically by 2005, so pressure is increasing to improve IT delivery. This POST report analyses why some government IT projects fail, the measures government has put in place to tackle these problems and their effectiveness.”
It's also worth following up on the 2002 report published by the UK National Audit Office and Office of Government Commerce (OGC) which identifed eight common causes of major IT project failure. Although this applied to major government projects the criteria still provide a useful frame of reference for all major IT projects.
- Lack of a clear link between the project and the organisation's key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success
- Lack of clear senior management and ministerial ownership and leadership
- Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders
- Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management
- Lack of understanding of, and contact with, the supply industry at senior levels in the organisation
- Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits)
- Too little attention paid to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps
- Inadequate resources and skills to deliver the total portfolio
A key lesson which comes over time and time again in government reports is the need for periodic external review. So, arguably, the OGC's concept of the Gateway Review should be top of the project management list of any major IT project. A Gateway Review is:
“… a review of an acquisition programme or procurement project carried out at a key decision point by a team of experienced people, independent of the project team.”
A recent report The Challenges of Complex IT Projects by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society makes for uncomfortable reading. The report highlights how billions of pounds are wasted every year on new IT systems. The RAE's summary of the report states:
“The UK public sector alone has spent an estimated £12.4 billion on software in the last year and the overall UK spend on IT is projected to be a monumental £22.6 billion … We looked at a range of studies showing that only around 16 per cent of IT projects can be considered truly successful.”
A truely depressing finding.
So dear reader, choose your favourite major project, apply some, or all, of the criteria you'll find in the above sources and pretend you're a member of the Public Accounts Committee. What's your findings? What's your recommendations? What lessons can be added to the stack already out there? The question is what prevents otherwise apparently clever people from learning them?
