Applying CRM to IT Projects

Graham Hill

Where are the Hybrid Managers?

Liz

What? IT projects run for the benefit of end-users (customers)! Are you mad?. And a business analyst as the end-user representative on IT projects! Heresy. I can see that you won't have many IT friends for much longer.

Seriously, these should be daily business in all IT projects. IT is an important enabler for all businesses, but it only works when it is developed collaboratively with end-users. That may mean using a formal project management methodology like PRINCE2 on complex strategic projects, all the way to using iterative RAD/JAD prototyping on fast-moving tactical projects. No IT project should be run without extensive involvement of users throughout each of the analysis, design, development and implementation phases.

In a previous life I was a systems analyst (UK Government accredited in SSADM) and an IT project manager (involved in prototyping the first version of PRINCE). I am still heavily involved in IT on most consulting and interim assignments today. It helps enormously that I was an IT professional in the past. But I am an exception. Let's look at a couple of caricatures to see why. See if you recognise them in your organisation:

The Bluff Businessman doesn't know anything about enterprise IT. Nor is he really interested. He thinks IT never delivers what he wants, but that it should be able to solve all his problems. If his 12 year old son can knock up a school blog over a weekend, why can't IT solve all his simple business problems. And what is with all this change request malarky. He told IT what he wanted ages ago. It's not his fault that he is too busy running the business to attend progress meetings. Or that markets, customers and competitors are changing continuously. It is hard enough selling widgets without having to battle with the new-age weirdoes he meets in the coridoor outside IT. They don't even speak plain English to him.

The Clever Coder isn't actually interested in business at all. He is interested in computation, particularly in Java programming. He even has his own mini-computer at home in the basement, salvaged when a friend's business was closed. That way he can keep contact with his first real love, Fortran 77. And businessmen are just so unreasonable. They don't know what they really want, but they want it yesterday. That is until tomorrow comes, when what they want will have changed anyway. Whatever. As long as it keeps him busy with creating the next monument to his programming genius, he isn't that bothered. They are not the ones paying his paycheck after all. They are a necessary distraction. Part of the programmer's cat and mouse game.

Well, do you recognise them? There are elements of both of them in all the organisations I have worked with over the past 25 years.

What is required is someone who can bring them both together. A Hybrid Manager who understands what the business wants to do and what is possible within its IT/IS landscape. Who can build bridges between the business and its overbearing demands and IT with its overcomplex environment. And who can represent both parties during each phase of enterprise IT projects. But they need more power to influence than business analysts typically have. IT is a strategic issue for business after all. Sadly, these people are few and far between. They have been for the 20 years I have been a consultant and interim manager. And a hybrid manager.

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager