Nik Gebhard recently spoke about vendors who “seem to be inordinately skilled at pulling the wool over business’ eyes”. These vendors have great sales pitches and get companies to invest vast sums of money in technologies that may not be the right fit for their organisation. The vendor throws in some golf days, a few logo-emblazoned t-shirts and some fancy lunches and the next thing you know, the sales pitch has worked.

Why the board should not make the decision

I appreciate that the above view is fairly cynical, but I’ve seen it happen enough times to not naively believe that all vendors are saints. They target the people in the business who can sign off costs. So the angle I want to explore is around when the decision to go with a specific vendor is made at a board level. Boards do not work in the detail; they are not “at the coal face”. When vendors are pitching their products to senior management, they are selling a concept, one which people in the detail will have to make work (which in principle is not a bad thing). But where a board is not accustomed to consulting downwards within their organisation, big problems are likely to occur; projects fail when the detailed truth is incompatible with the vendor’s version of reality.

Make it about the journey

The board would have been told that the new system will solve all their problems. But if no consideration is given to the people using the system, then the same issues may still occur in the future; they will just manifest themselves in a different shape. We all know that garbage in gives us garbage out. No matter what technology is used, if it’s not used properly by the users the system will be deemed a failure.

In my experiences people are willing to change, as long as they are taken along for the journey. If employees have to change the way they work, they want to feel like they contributed to the change, that they were heard. If the board approves a vendor without proper engagement and the employees see the CIO, CFO and CEO all walking around in shiny new golf shirts on casual Friday, they will feel bitter. They will feel that the new system was thrust upon them because Joe Soap knew Frank Black at school and, invariably, the rumours around the corridor will be about how much kick-back was paid out.

A few years ago, Susan Penny Brown said in an interview with Laura Brandenburg that a project team can eliminate the majority of vendors based on the top 5 needs of the business and “begin to talk to the vendors that are a potential fit specifically about the more detailed requirements”. All too often the decision around which vendor to go with is decided in the boardroom based on a high level sales pitch. Vendor assessments cannot happen at this level – detailed analysis is required and employee buy-in needs to be created.

So what should BAs do?

A BA’s role is to ensure that the vendors’ sales pitches are evaluated thoroughly against the detailed truth. We need to guide the board (or whoever has their ear) to understand that what vendors say and show during their pitches has been carefully crafted to win the business, not to actually implement the system. And once the vendor has been selected based on sound reasoning, one of the BA’s roles is to take the users along for the journey. Once a board approves a vendor’s IT system, the board starts to think about the next journey, the next big strategic initiative. They forget that the rest of their employees are only just climbing on board, or have even refused to buy a ticket.

This article originally appeared on Bridging the Gap on 14 December 2011. Click here to view the original article.

The post Why board members are the wrong people to decide IT vendors – Ryan Knapton appeared first on BSG (UK).

Implementation projects that I have been involved in, have typically deferred the engaging of business analysts until project slippage has arisen. I’m not entirely sure whether this is a scapegoat tactic or a sincere attempt at project recovery.

Either way, a challenge arises to convince business stakeholders that an analysis of the original requirements and a “system best-fit” is required. This proposal is often met with phrases like “budget spent”, “budget available” and that going back to the proverbial grindstone is too expensive and a waste of time.

Some form of requirements analysis inevitably follows. This is done to gain traction and better understand the ultimate objective and timelines.

You get what you pay for
It is at this point that a number of requirement gaps surface and the back-and-forth of change request documentation begins. Soon enough, the project team spends more time analysing and writing up change request proposals than implementing an off-the-shelf application. Along with bespoke requirements come defects and the inescapable timeline delays. Not to mention the increased vendor support and maintenance costs for bespoke code.

I find that the greatest misconception with system implementations is the forecast completion timelines. Vendors seem to be inordinately skilled at pulling the wool over business’ eyes by instilling some form of delusion that their system will be ready to suit the business need quicker and to a greater extent than any other system offered on the market. Over-promise and under-deliver is key to landing a contract. After all, it is a dog-eat-dog world.

How much money fixes a bad decision?
It is not long before conversations around technology choice become more apparent in day-to-day project conversation. A silent game of “Who is responsible?” ensues. From a reputational perspective, it could be lethal admitting that the executive team has made a poor decision and invested copious amounts of money in it. The question is though: “Is that more dangerous than continuing to throw money at it until it is no longer a bad decision?”

Personally, I’m for transparency and openness, but have now realised that this does not seem to be the favoured choice. I’ve recognised that businesses will more readily press on with extensive customisation, rather than go back to the drawing board. This approach means that change requests are raised thick and fast in return for large sums of money. Suddenly the cost-benefit evaluation that was pivotal when going through the system selection process is no longer applicable.

At what point does the reputational cost of admitting to having made a poor decision no longer outweigh the cost of customisation? Can monetary value be applied to reputation?

Should we point fingers, or should we get on with it?
I spent a little over a year on a project implementing an off-the-shelf system that was originally deemed best-fit by business stakeholders. The words “wrong choice” were blasphemy. It very quickly became apparent that customisation was the only way the business was willing to go. The instruction from the project board was to press on. Change requests were raised almost daily. Many months of missed development deadlines and revised budgets went by before the project was eventually completed.

Almost sixteen months have now passed since go-live and the executive stakeholders and decision makers are no longer in the same department.  What’s more is that the company is evaluating a new system to replace what was implemented. Something they could have been doing almost two years earlier. This is a particularly poor and costly consequence of an even poorer decision.

“Sticking to your guns” can work out
On the other hand, I have seen and been involved in a number of projects where the same “stick to our guns” attitude has been applied and organisations have shown significant growth. I have to ask myself: “Does this mean that this was a less poor choice in technology, or were other factors at play?” I do know that many of these projects also entailed extensive customisation – customisation that has since paid for itself.

Obviously the ideal scenario is for informed technology decisions to be made off the back of extensive analysis. But, what if this fundamental step has been missed? At what point do you make a call for good decision versus bad decision? At what point do you no longer insist that the price tag on reputation is higher than the cost of customisation? Is it a calculated risk or blind luck?

This article originally appeared on Bridging the Gap on 21 April 2011. Click here to view the original article.

The post Project sponsors: Saving face or saving costs? – Nik Gebhard appeared first on BSG (UK).