In an excellent interview with Information Age, Ministry of Justice CIO, Andrew Gay said “If you are going to deliver an IT project vaguely near budget, it would be far better to spend a huge amount of time working out exactly what you were trying to do with that programme rather than drift into it.”.
For smaller projects, that up-front preparation time doesn’t have to be “huge”, but it deserves more attention than it often gets. The more clarity there is – about what is needed, what’s a priority and what can be deferred, what the budget is, and exactly who is going to be involved in the project – the greater the chances of the project being a success and of the IT actually delivering what is needed. And when you are buying IT, it helps the suppliers too. As one said about a fairly large project I ran in 2008, “It was the most comprehensive Invitation To Tender ever but … it meant that no significant changes have arisen, therefore no additional cost – very smooth for everybody.”.
Net: time spent on setting out your requirements, priorities and constraints up front can save time, money and disappointment later on.
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