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October 18, 2005

Project Fault Lines in Implementation Designs

It's often remarked that "because humans are involved, there will be error." IT Architect magazine, formerly known as "Network Computing", offered up a practitioner's cautionary alert through Michel Labelle's report of two implementations that failed due to their project managers. What was the gist? One case featured unresolved disputes about specifications, and the other case revolved around confusion about how progress would be evaluated. In both cases, the PM's operational agenda simply didn't match the client's.

Labelle's lament on lousy project managers certainly zeroes in on the notion of human error. But without defending the project managers' obstinacy central to both of Labelle's failed implementations, it seems clear, too, that the PMs were making judgement calls about what constituted unacceptable risk -- not to the project or to the client but to the vendor, who after all is the PM's *employer*... Given that, the requirements of the implementation plan turn out to be quite different from the "service level agreement" assumed to be in effect by virtue of the contract. Labelle was really a victim of poor customer service, and the proper point of resolution should have been a business relationship manager, not the project manager.

This doesn't argue that there must be two separate people to handle the relationship and the project. Instead, it separates the roles in terms of responsibilities. One person may indeed play both roles, but in at least one role -- the business relationship manager role -- needs must take priority over requirements. Indeed, Labelle, a twenty-year veteran of implementations, points out this difference. But the ongoing issue is to design the conduct of the project so that at the outset there is alignment between the project's contract (the business agreement), its SLA (the service level agreement), and its requirements (the production agreement).

For a deeper consideration of this issue, see the related Archestra articles:
Why Projects Fail and Four Breakthroughs

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at October 18, 2005 7:23 AM

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