CIO — There are few things as draining on an organization?in dollars and morale?as a project that has lived beyond its time. Loathe to admit defeat, companies rarely pull the plug on an ERP or CRM installation gone bad. In the meantime, any number of resources get sucked down the metaphorical drain?including, if you’re not careful, your job. As the CIO, you’re the head doctor on the ward. It’s up to you to determine which projects you can bandage and which you should put out of their misery.
If the thought of killing an expensive project makes your heart palpitate, there are steps you can take to minimize the discomfort. But before you can deep-six those doomed projects, you have to know how to identify them.
Your project is in trouble when you experience one or more of the following warning signs. One?your gut is rumbling. "Pay attention to what your noncognitive self is telling you," says Eileen Strider, former CIO for insurance provider Universal Underwriter in Overland Park, Kan. Strider knows of what she speaks. In 1997, after one year and $1 million worth of patchwork solutions, she had to kill a policy administration and rating system project. "My gut knew way before my head knew," she says. "Then my head had to figure out what really was going on." Too often, CIOs rely on their intellect to see them through tough times. It’s instinctive to throw resources at problems as they pop up in the hopes that this time it will finally fix everything, but that’s part of the seduction. "It’s not like you aren’t paying attention," says Strider. "It’s just hard to see clearly when you’re in the middle of it."
Two?your project manager starts smoking cigarettes. While the warning signs probably aren’t as obvious as bad breath and tar-stained fingers, you can tell a lot about the state of your project by changes in your employees’ behavior. Johanna Rothman, a consultant for the Cutter Consortium in Arlington, Mass., who recently authored a report on evaluating projects, says you should constantly gauge your employees’ enthusiasm. "Are they excited about the project?" she asks. "If they are excited they will tell you stuff about it. Once they stop talking, you are in trouble." A good way to gauge behavior is to go to the company cafeteria and join in?or just listen to?the lunchtime banter.
Three?the rumor mill is churning overtime. And it is probably right. If you hear that finance or HR or some other department is complaining about the parts of the project that relate to them, there probably is something to it.
