Although most of the projects we’ve done are successful, there are a couple that failed and yes, we’ve learned from them. Summarized here are 5 points we learnt from failed projects.
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1. Lack of executive support – either lack or none, the outcomes are still the same, no sponsorship to decide and drive when needed. We often find that team members, especially in the Asian culture, don’t take ownership or responsibilities of these projects. Working on their normal routine task is their comfort zone and they don’t want to come out of it. Without encouragement and challenges from executives, things never get done.
2. Overlook business process – either with the charisma of the word “automation”, customers gets lost and skips the fundamental activities of acquiring data, hence business processes of which either never was there or is thee but changes from time to time depending on the understanding of the person working with the process. Project that aims for automation quickly and sloppy won’t last long.
3. Data governance – thing like terminology and taxonomies, data stewardship, decision rights, accountability, corporate policies and standards if often overlooked and skipped as they believe it’s straight forward.
4. Try doing too much – Big bang approach with an “I have a dream” mindset, not only does this consumes too much resources, but the focus is lost and success, even a milestone meet is not appreciated.
5. Part-time contribution – Main project staffs often have their main job to take care with no replacement, when month-end comes, the project room is vacant. Assigning someone to take care of his/her duties during the entire project is a must, as these staffs will engage in the design, develop and deliver/rollout of the project internally.
