Rajiv Saxena sat with his eyes closed, hanging on to every word that his guru chanted.

“Visualise your success, don’t let the failures pull you down.”

“Visualise your success, don’t let the failures pull you down,” guruji repeated.

“One of the biggest secret of success lies in learning from failure,” continued guruji.

While the words soothed, they also created a twirling of conflicting thoughts in Rajiv’s head as he was battling the near failure of a major IT implementation at work. Rajiv worked as the GM (IT) for an FMCG company that had a wide spectrum of food and beverage products.

Sitting in a contemplative state, Rajiv reflected upon the moment when he was called by his boss Vikas Sharma five months ago.

“Rajiv, we are battling with a waste issue, a lot of our inventory is coming back, unused because it reaches retail shelves late,” said Vikas.

“And the management feels that deploying an ERP solution is the only way out, so let’s get cracking.”

Sleepless nights
Rajiv had spent many sleepless nights in the last five months. Everything from getting the RFP in place to finally selecting the vendor had been a challenge, but the real downhill journey started when the rollout began.

“And the management feels that deploying an ERP solution is the  only way out,” was the one-line mandate that Rajiv had been working on. Now in retrospect, he realised that the requirement was very vague and abstract. In a flash it came back to him.

With no real inputs from end-users, Rajiv and his team had been building what they believed was needed and not what was actually needed. The other aspect that had compromised the project, he realised, was their limited knowledge and understanding of the real business issues. So, inevitably when the system was delivered to business users, they only found limited use of it.

Rajiv fished out his notebook and scribbled something.

Delivering value
Rajiv continued his pursuit for answers and researched more on the Internet. His second flash of enlightenment came when he saw a survey report by UK-based advisory firm Dynamic Markets. The report indicated that while three out of five IT projects fail to meet their schedules, two out of five fail to deliver the expected business value.

The term ‘business value’ now struck a chord with him. Soon, everything was falling in place for him.

Rajiv’s hand instinctively went to his breast pocket, the home of his notebook. He took it out again and scribbled something.

“Hey, what do you keep writing in there,” asked Rekha, Rajiv’s desk neighbour who worked for the marketing department.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, you can tell me.”

“It’s actually nothing.”

“All right, all right.”

Timelines in place
After an awkward silence, Rajiv asked, “So how is work with you?”

“Don’t ask, man. I am under so much pressure to deliver. My boss does not understand, he just throws unrealistic deadlines at me.”

“You are lucky, you don’t have to bear this burden of deadlines that are unrealistic,” Rekha continued.

Those words hit Rajiv like a rock. “Hey Rekha, I will catch up later. Just remembered that there is something important that I have to attend,” said Rajiv, as he  dashed to his work station.

“Rajiv has been acting funny since morning,” thought Rekha.

Rajiv opened multiple files on his terminal and started to make detailed notes on a sheet. After about 25 minutes of alternating between typing and writing, he leaned back with a definitive grin, his first in the last few tension-filled days.

It was the smile of an enlightened man. He grabbed his small notebook again and scribbled a few words in it. Immediately after finishing the scribbling, he stood up and looked at Rekha and said, “Thanks Rekha.”

“For what?”

“Nothing.”

“Hey, what’s with you tod…” Before Rekha could complete, Rajiv was out of the room.

“Rajiv has been acting funny since morning,” thought Rekha again.

Does that fit?
“Boss, I need a couple of hours off after lunch,” requested Vinayak.

“Wedding shopping again?” asked Rajiv. Vinayak was a young systems administrator who was getting married the next week.

“Naah boss, suit fitting.”

“All right, but make that an hour-and-a-half, we have some work to catch up on,” said Rajiv.

The thinker in Rajiv was active that day. And he started to see a thought in Vinayak’s request too.

The IT guys do a great amount of testing during project development, but should the users not run tests to see if the system meets their requirements. If testing was important for something like a wedding suit then an IT project definitely needed more than just one ‘fitting session.”

It was scribble time again for Rajiv.

Rajiv leaned back, knowing he had zeroed in on the problem. He picked up his land line and called Vikas.

The lessons at last
Fifteen minutes later, Vikas was looking at a page in a small pocket notebook with five points scribbled on it.

“Rajiv, you will have to explain.”

“Boss, you know we are battling a failing ERP and I did some research and thinking,” said Rajiv.

“The IT implementation landscape is dotted with many failures. While technology has progressed and advanced by leaps and bounds, IT project implementation is still stuck in quick sand—two steps up and one step down,” continued Rajiv.

“I get that, but what’s your point?” Vikas sounded a little irritated.

“Sir, I know why we are staring at failure and I think if we set these five things right even now, our efforts will be a success.”

“And they are…?”

“One, poor requirement statement from the management... we had only a single-line mandate. It has to be more detailed and precise for us to develop a system.”

“Two, there is no user involvement. Nowhere in our development cycles the business managers were involved on what their needs from the system was. We thus developed something from our own understanding of the business, and that sir, proved inadequate.” Rajiv’s voice had a ring of command to it now, and yet Vikas seemed to like it.

“Three, the timelines are unrealistic. I will not say too much on this. But they have to be rational and realistic.”

“Four, lack of quality testing. While our QA has done its job and the code is clean, it lacks functionality that business users want. It is they who should be testing the final product, not us.”

Vikas was nodding in agreement. And he felt proud of Rajiv.

“And last and definitely not the least, this project is a change issue and not an IT project. So we need an internal sponsor, someone in the executive leadership to drive it for business results.”

Vikas was dumb struck. “Can you repeat all of this in front of the CEO?”

“Oh yes.”

Without a word, Vikas picked up his phone and called the CEO. “Boss, we need to see you, now!”