Insuring your software project

Mindful of how many IT projects go wrong*, specialist insurer Hiscox is now offering insurance to IT vendors, in case their customers sue them.

Hiscox’s advice for the start of the project? Make sure the specification is rock solid. If the specification is ambiguous, it’s like writing a blank cheque to the solicitors as client & vendor argue about whether or not the system does what it was supposed t o do.

And their advice for during the project? Manage changes. Any changes to the spec have to be documented and agreed, preferably under a formal change control process. Otherwise the process known as “scope creep” can derail the project and leave it never quite finished.

* A 2007 survey by Market Dynamics shows that 62% of IT project miss the deadlines, 49% go over budget and 41% fail to deliver the expected benefits…

Preparation is vital

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.

Buying a website – taking the user’s perspective

When I work with a client who wants a new (or redesigned) website, they often start from the perspective of what they want to achieve with the site – more sales, new product lines, growing a network, attracting donors… That’s important. Knowing what you want to get out of it means you can be clear about what are the success criteria for you. But it’s even more important to see it from the user’s perspective. What do they want to achieve when they come to your site? What will make it easier for them to do that? What will get in their way? What’s relevant to their goals? (Chances are that reading your organisation’s history is not high on their agenda…)

An exercise I regularly use with my clients is to ask them to think of 3 websites they hate to use and 3 that they love, then we talk about why the love them or hate them. Reasons for hating websites regularly include poor performance (why does the web site spend ages loading ads when all I want to do it find out when the train times are?), how hard it can be to find what you are looking for and just plain poor design. A classic was an insurance comparison site that would not allow you to change your post code because “that might change the quotations you have” – doh, yes, I’ve moved so I actually want new quotations! Reasons for loving sites include their simplicity, remembering what you have done or read or saved (so you don’t have to do it all again) and being positively useful. All of that helps clients think about what their users will find useful, helpful, easy and so on.

Another exercise, involving a little more work, is to to ask your own clients what they like or hate about your existing website if you have one (useful responses include “I’ve never looked at it”, especially if you follow up with questions about why that is the case). Apart from anything else, asking about your website is a good reason to make contact with past clients and to remind them of your existence. If they have the time, clients are very often pleased to be asked what they would find of value on your website.

If you want to take the users’ perspective, someone well worth reading is Gerry McGovern – his newsletters are a regular reminder not to stray from what keeps users happy, productive and coming back for more.

It’s not just poor suppliers…

A recent article in Information Week examined how buyers of IT feel about their suppliers of IT. It was a mixed review with highs and lows, with buyers disappointed in suppliers who left them with unfulfilled promises and who used irresponsible practices. Salesmen who promised much and delivered less. Products that turned out to be less than a perfect match to the buyer’s requirements.

But not all the problems lie with the suppliers. As the article points out “When things don’t go well, tech buyers also deserve a chunk of the blame. They do a poor job communicating requirements. They fail to bring the right people to sales presentations and don’t ask the right questions. They don’t always allocate sufficient resources to deploy and operate products…”.

The absence of good requirements as a cause of IT failure (not merely disappointment) was underlined in 1995 by the Standish Group Report. They found that nearly a third of projects were cancelled before completion, and just over 50% of the projects cost almost double the original estimates.

Poor and changing requirements accounted for over a third of project failures. Add in requirements-related issues of unrealistic expectations or timescales and a lack of objectives, and together these are the primary causes of more than half of the IT failures described in the report.

Clearly the lessons from the Standish report still stand today – if you want to buy IT that delivers what you want, you first of all have to be very clear about what you want. (You also need to find good suppliers who are honest about what they can deliver, but at least you will have made a start!).

Buying the right IT

In my previous blog (“Buying IT: How to end up with the wrong IT”), I picked out some of the most common mistakes that people make when they are buying IT. This article lists the ways to avoid these mistakes. They may look over-the-top, but the steps can be simplified to suit the purchase.

The seven steps to success

If you want to avoid disaster or failure, then there are some basic steps you can take:

For example, if you’re just buying a printer, you still need to think about what you want it for and the capabilities it has to have (such as how fast it prints), but you can do the research and buy online. Don’t forget to consider the costs of printing though, not just the initial cost of the printer – some inkjets can be very cheap to buy but VERY expensive to run.

1. think about your business needs as a whole, as well as the needs of your users, and write down a structured specification of what you want – that specification provides the basis of requesting quotations from a number of different suppliers
2. set your budget and timescales (realistically) and define what the investment has to achieve, e.g. the time to process an order reduces from 2 weeks to 2 hours
3. research and/or ask around for recommended suppliers – make sure that the suppliers are familiar with the type of technology or development that you want
4. ask at least 3 suppliers for quotes AND for references for similar work, and contact all of the references to ask about the supplier – remember to ask your potential suppliers to sign a confidentiality agreement if you have intellectual property or commercially sensitive information to protect
5. assess the responses, then interview at least 2 suppliers to make sure that they understand your needs, that you are comfortable working with them and that you understand what will be delivered when
6. agree a price, deliverables, timescales and payment schedule and encapsulate that in a contract between you and your chosen supplier
7. monitor progress against the plan and build a good working relationship with your supplier

You can find more detailed help on choosing IT suppliers from the Business Link site.

How to end up with the wrong IT

According to research, many owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) consider the prospect of investing in technology intimidating. It’s not surprising. Surveys show that anything from 30% to 60% of these investments fail to deliver on time or on budget, or fail to deliver the expected business results. This article describes how this happens – next time I’ll look at how to avoid disaster…

Three ways to guarantee disaster

1. don’t write down what you want – just chat to your chosen supplier, web developer or IT service provider and rely on them understanding what you need

2. ask your friend, neighbour, cousin, aunt or partner to build your system or web site, or to look after your IT network and computers – it’s so much easier, and you don’t have to go hunting for a supplier that you don’t know
 
3. don’t worry about protecting your business – a contract, particularly one that protects your intellectual property or which sets out deadlines and payment terms, would get in the way of a good relationship with your supplier
1. don’t think about your overall business – it’s simpler to buy the system or service you need just now to solve that particular problem, and worry about the rest later

2. don’t think about the people who will have to use your new system or web site – after all, you know best about your business and how it should operate

3. don’t set realistic objectives, dates or budgets for your investment – you want it as cheaply as possible and you need it “yesterday”

4. don’t keep tabs on your supplier – interrupting them with questions about progress or deliverables will only slow them down

Four ways to fail to achieve value for money

Next time… how to avoid these mistakes and make buying IT much more successful!