1, the demand is not clear or often changes.
Unclear demand is a very common phenomenon in the process of informatization, and it is also the primary reason for project failure. Fuzzy requirements are usually not unclear about the goal of system construction, but can not accurately describe the structure, function or process of the system. Some project business processes are very complex, involving many people and things. Sometimes it is difficult for business people to clearly explain the requirements of the system, or even to organize the described problems into detailed documents. However, the designers and implementers of the system often don't know the details and design the scheme according to their own understanding. Any deviation in system design will eventually lead to the deviation between system function and target.
In practical work, many enterprises pay attention to the construction process, but not to the rigor and meticulous degree of demand analysis. They are eager to get on the horse, are used to taking it one step at a time, and often change their requirements during the project implementation, which leads to continuous adjustment of plans or a lot of repetitive work, which not only delays the construction period, but also wastes resources.
The demand is not clear and often changes, which easily leads to the difficulty in completing the project with good quality and quantity within the scheduled time; Unclear delivery interface may easily lead to disputes among all parties involved in the project. This is not only the disaster of the enterprise itself, but also the disaster of IT service providers, software providers and implementation units.
2. Insufficient leadership support.
We often say that enterprise informatization is the "number one project", and the success of informatization projects needs the support of enterprise leaders. If the support is not enough, there will be many problems, resulting in the project can not be promoted or the overall out of control.
Without sufficient support from business leaders, they will not participate too much, but will completely delegate power to IT personnel. For some far-reaching things, IT is difficult for IT personnel to make judgments, such as the steps and strategies of informatization promotion, the impact of IT projects on the overall operation of enterprises, the best time for project start-up, the best investment scale, whether the project is self-built or outsourced, etc. All these require a comprehensive grasp of the development goals and business strategies of enterprises in order to make appropriate decisions.
The implementation of IT projects usually involves many departments, and the members of the project team usually come from different departments. At the same time, they all have their own direct supervisors and other jobs. Once they start to get busy in their own department and participate in a project that lacks the support of their superiors and has an uncertain future, they will inevitably lack motivation. Furthermore, the implementation of some IT projects will affect the interests of some departments or bring greater burdens to some departments. In this case, the progress of the project often encounters great resistance, and the result of project failure is obvious.
3. Insufficient capital investment.
Business leaders may have the impression that IT investment is increasing, but IT is difficult to see the benefits of investment for a while, and the IT department is the cost center of the enterprise. Therefore, some enterprises will attach great importance to the amount of investment when they do information projects.
We often see the company make such a decision: we are going to do a CRM project with a budget of less than 200 thousand; Recruit two technicians next month, with a salary of less than 8000; Next year, we will increase the budget of the IT department from 2% to 3% of the sales ...................................................................................................................................................... But the problem is that many enterprises don't have a correct understanding of the value of IT projects, so they can only measure it by cost.
Using the guiding ideology of cost control to guide the implementation of information projects can easily lead to incorrect evaluation of the value of information systems, insufficient investment in key projects, inability to complete projects on schedule, inability to guarantee quality, inability to keep up with follow-up services and loss of important partners.
4, communication is not in place
Communication is an important factor for the smooth progress of the project. However, not everyone will communicate in the way we expected, because there are many cases of project failure caused by poor communication.
The first situation is caused by the inconsistent expectations of internal and external suppliers. For a project that needs multi-party cooperation, enterprises want to spend the least investment, while suppliers want to get the maximum return. Therefore, the two sides will have differences in terms of project duration, acceptance criteria and personnel input. The final result is that both sides do not directly face the problems, but adopt vague strategies to avoid some problems. Both sides are opportunistic, and when the project is delivered and accepted, this contradiction will continue to erupt.
The second situation is caused by the inconsistent understanding of the problem between business personnel and technical personnel. Business people are usually the people who put forward the requirements. He knows exactly what he wants, but he may not be able to express or present it in a way that technicians can understand. Technicians often guess according to their own understanding. When there is a deviation between the two sides and there is no third party who completely controls the situation to correct this deviation, the seeds of risk have been planted.
The third situation is caused by the inconsistency between the project manager and the project executor. The project manager has a clear understanding of the project objectives, progress and quality standards, but may not know the details of the project implementation very well, mistakenly thinking that the senior management can implement it according to their own intentions. However, the people who actually implement the project may have all kinds of bad conditions, such as laziness, shirking responsibility, complaining, or not being good at expressing themselves, which leads to poor communication, so the promotion of the project is likely to deviate from the manager's goal.
5. Lack of planning and management
In some projects, leaders often get on the horse as soon as they clap their heads, lacking adequate preparation and demonstration. Informatization project is a very complex system engineering, and its complexity is no less than any construction project. If planning and management are not carried out in accordance with scientific methods, with a mentality of "stepping on watermelon skin", nine times out of ten, it will fail.
Project planning and management need not be complicated, but appropriate arrangements must be made according to the scale of the project. In the implementation of a project, at least several basic questions should be clarified: What is the goal? Is the demand clear? What's the timetable? What are the acceptance criteria? What is the budget? How to arrange the personnel? If these problems are not considered clearly, the chaos in the later stage of the project can be imagined.
6. Unreasonable staffing
We all know that professionals should be allowed to do professional things, but in fact, any enterprise will face the shortage of professionals. The lack of professionals does not mean that the project cannot be promoted. As long as resources are allocated reasonably, things can still be done However, some obviously mismatched human resources often become the killers of information projects.
The first is the wrong choice of the project manager. Informatization construction is a very complicated system engineering, so we must put the right person in the position of supervisor. This person should have strong comprehensive ability, certain communication and coordination ability, and necessary learning ability. Such people are often hard to find. What if I can't find it internally? Then dig people from suppliers. If you really can't find someone, the project is best, and so on. If the manager is incompetent, the project will definitely go wrong.
Second, the skill direction of technicians does not match. Information technology involves many fields, and a technical expert can only master a few fields. The person who pulls it. Net to do jave, to do database development, to promote people to do maintenance, are all things that traditional enterprises often do. It's not that these people can't do it, mainly because the cost of learning * * is too high and the resources created by * * are wasted. The biggest problem is that job responsibilities change too much, which easily leads to brain drain.
Third, there is no good connection with external cooperation units. If there are external technical service providers and software providers, enterprises need suitable personnel to communicate with them. Otherwise, improper personnel arrangement and poor information transmission will lead to many misunderstandings.
The implementation of informatization project is a systematic project, which requires many skills. Enterprises cannot expect to find the best people to participate in any project, but reasonable arrangement of personnel is the basic requirement for project implementation.
7. Improper system selection
Different people will have different views on what kind of system an enterprise intends to choose on the project. Some prefer to choose foreign products, such as systems of well-known enterprises such as SAP and ORACLE. Some prefer to choose domestic products, such as Kingdee, UFIDA or other well-known domestic enterprises; Some people think that it is necessary to customize development and make an integrated solution system through the power of internal or third-party software developers. In fact, no matter what choice an enterprise makes, it makes sense. Improper system selection will bring endless trouble to the later stage of the project, and may even lead to the waste of the early investment of the enterprise. Improper system selection is mainly reflected in several aspects.
First, develop the system directly from scratch without relying on the mature underlying system architecture. Many enterprises are keen on personalized customization, but it is necessary for enterprises to realize that the complex system made in a few months through the conventional customization development mode will inevitably have inherent shortcomings in the underlying system architecture, which will hinder the subsequent improvement and optimization. Experienced developers believe that a slightly larger IT system needs at least two years of iterative development and continuous optimization before it can truly reach a mature commercial level. The underlying architecture of the software system is inherently inadequate, and many problems that appear later can either not be solved or are very time-consuming and laborious to solve.
Second, an inappropriate technical route was chosen. Some software systems use outdated technologies or adopt very unpopular technical routes. Although there is nothing wrong with the product itself, enterprises should fully consider it. Because there are very few suppliers who can adopt this technical route in the market, once the system is online, enterprises may be bound by software suppliers, and the cost of subsequent upgrades or updates may be very high due to the lack of alternatives. Once the supplier has problems in its own operation, the risk will be even greater.
Thirdly, the scalability and customization of the system are not considered. Informatization construction is not once and for all, and there will definitely be changes and adjustments in subsequent operations. If the expansibility and customization of the system are low, the long-term availability of the system will be poor and the input-output ratio of the enterprise will be very low. Therefore, when choosing suppliers, enterprises must make clear the relationship between system developers and service implementers, and the cost of subsequent expansion or customization of the system.
8. Mistakes in selecting suppliers
There are many types of suppliers, including software developers, product suppliers, implementation service providers and operation and maintenance service providers. It is actually a big problem for traditional enterprises to choose which supplier to cooperate with. Some traditional enterprises lack the ability and experience to choose IT suppliers, and as a result, they are fooled by some suppliers, causing great losses to the implementation of the project.
When choosing IT suppliers, enterprises should grasp a principle, that is, choose suppliers suitable for their own development goals and stages for cooperation. The bigger the supplier, the better, and the higher the popularity. The so-called "door to door" is the best. The following are some common supplier selection criteria for enterprises' reference.
First of all, it depends on the sustainable development ability of suppliers and the professional ability of personnel. The IT industry is changing rapidly, and the life cycle of enterprises is also very short. If the supplier does not have the ability of sustainable development, the enterprise may not even find the shadow of the supplier in the later stage when investing in a long-term project. The overall strength of suppliers and the professional ability of specific service personnel may not be completely matched. Besides finding the right company, we should also find the right person. Small companies may have people with strong abilities, and big companies may also have people with poor abilities. The enterprise shall properly evaluate the capabilities of the specific responsible personnel in the supplier.
Secondly, it depends on the experience of similar projects. The implementation experience of similar projects is very important, and there are many sub-sectors in IT industry. If there is no previous experience for reference, the learning cost of both parties will be high. If you have some similar experience, you can reuse some previous achievements of suppliers to save costs. At the same time, suppliers have experience in similar projects, which can help enterprises eliminate some blind spots in project implementation.
Thirdly, it depends on the service ability and cooperation degree of suppliers. Some suppliers have very clear short-term goals and leave after the project, and the development direction of the company often changes. It may be difficult for such suppliers to help enterprises continuously optimize and upgrade their systems. Some suppliers are relatively strong, which may be due to large scale, high brand awareness, or the choice of business strategy, and the energy invested in each customer may be limited. Suppliers of information projects should not only sell products, but also have certain consulting and service capabilities, and can cooperate with the implementation and operation and maintenance of information projects for a long time.
Text/Li Bihao, selected from "Teach You to Play Enterprise Informatization"