IT’s role in internal projects

This could be a tuff one to cover, but I am going to “impose” my vision.


When it comes to Internal projects, IT has a key role. Why? It’s because IT is omnipresent in the organization. IT should be aware of all (or most) of the business process and therefore is the “guardian” of the business.

So if your organization has decided to migrate to a new Sales Application, or a new financial package, IT must be the leader of this project, even if this migration is done by a third party.

The steps should be these:

Requirements: IT Should talk with the users and understand what they need (not what they want) and create a draft document that will serve as the basis for the project.

Find a partner: IT should “shop around” and find a third party for this project. The draft will be the foundation for this. The first meeting should be IT only, remember you are shopping around.

Involve the customer: Once you have narrowed down to 2 or 3 partners, get you internal customer involved. There should be ONE official project leader from the customer’s side. Try the find the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Supervise: Never leave the customer and the partner alone! If you do…. you will pay for it. Because the user has no clue what he needs and you can end up with a white elephant.

Feet on the ground: Your job is at all stages to keep the feet on the ground.

Make sure testing is done correctly: Once the project is “done” there must be a well-designed testing phase where “everything” must be tested and checked and signed off by the team leaders and until every business unit that is touched by the project has given the written OK you CANT NOT go live.

There are more details to this but this is the bulk of the steps. I am open for comments or debate.

George.
The Captain