Your project’s going to fail. It’s almost a certainty. Over 65% of IT projects fail according to a recent report and over 75% of ERP projects fail. What makes your ServiceNow project any different?

75% of ERP Projects Fail

My career in IT spans more than 20 years and countless technologies and I’ve experienced my share of failures. While the official post mortem reason can and will vary, the underlying reasons are almost always the same.

• Competence - You hired the wrong people as project owners or project doers and they lacked the ability to effectively execute the project.
• Charter - The project was too ambitious, too vague, too disorganized, lacked executive support, lacked budget, etc. These projects are doomed from the start.
• Culture - You have a culture where failure isn’t tolerated. This leads to the dreaded ‘Nero Effect’. Project Management fiddles a nice tune to the executive stakeholders while the project burns in the background. Or executives believe in the dreaded 'Double Down' - leading to a project that lingers because politically it can't fail but, in reality, it failed long ago.

These seem like simple pitfalls to avoid but inevitably, and exhaustingly, they continue to recur in ServiceNow project failures like the IT version of “Groundhog Day”.

How do you avoid them?

1. Culture is the key, take an objective look at yours. You're not looking for a culture of success or failure but one of transparency. Cultures of success can breed the Nero Effect - the project will fail and no one will know until it's too late. Cultures of failure can breed the 'double down' - a project that never ends and thus never fails - see also sunk cost fallacy. A culture of transparency enables success by removing the penalties for honesty and allowing project issues to be addressed and remediated as necessary.
2. The Charter is a sword, sharpen it and keep it close. A project should be focused, well defined, well staffed, well funded, and overseen by an involved executive stakeholder. Avoid the temptation to broaden it unnecessarily. Avoid the temptation to form without sponsorship. Reject scope creep at all costs - this kills the project.
3. Competence is necessary, ensure it from the start. The people that do the work? They have to do the work. Ensure they're smart, creative, subject matter experts and ensure they have enough time to dedicate to the project - projects have deadlines. This is not the time for 'managers', this is the time for 'doers'.

Use these tips to help you dodge the most common causes of project failure.

Want to take your ServiceNow project's probability of success from 25% to something much higher? Reach out, I can help.

-Cory