Project Delays | Ron Rosenhead's Project Management Blog

There have been many articles in the press and on TV and radio complaining about the Single Payment Scheme which has culminated in a damning report by National Audit Office (NAO).

The report published has hit the headlines here in the UK for another poorly delivered project and suggests that:

“The implementation of the single payment scheme encountered difficulties that could result in the European Commission imposing a sizeable penalty.” In addition, the main complaint from UK farmers has been they have had to wait inordinately long times to receive payments. “The difficulties in making payments have caused distress to a significant minority of farmers and undermined the farming industry’s confidence in the Agency” suggested the report.

Switch now to the Editorial in Computer Weekly who commented on the report:

“Nothing changes. When a department gets covered with opprobrium by an NAO report, the relevant minister goes on BBC’s Today programme with what could be a yellowing script.

The routine is to disparage, in measured tones, the NAO’s figures, and then say that good progress is has been made, ideally topped with a generous helping of statistics.
MPs, the media and the public are left with no inkling that parts of the department are in administrative anarchy.

It’s not surprising then that the NAO’s Director Philip Gibby expressed his frustration, at a press conference last week, at having to revisit the Single Payment Scheme in a third report. Each time he is assured that progress is being made.

So can we trust the government’s assurances about the IT? Can we trust the government’s assurances on the state of any big IT-based project or programme?

We believe that government IT failures keep happening largely because they operate in a sunshine-and-roses universe in which truth and reality are poisons nobody goes anywhere near. Not departments. Not their agencies. And not their ministers. Thank goodness then for the NAO.”

There are some incredibly strong words in the Computer Weekly Editorial about a UK Government project :

“….failures keep happening largely because they operate in a sunshine-and-roses universe in which truth and reality are poisons nobody goes anywhere near…

It left me wondering whether your company operates in an area where truth and reality are places where people openly go. How much effort and energy is put into creating truth and reality or is it simply an area where few people go?

The full NAO Report can be found here

I was contacted by Prof Morris Pentel, Chairman of Customer Experience Foundation (CEF). He drew attention to a white paper published by CEF on “The Hidden Costs of Technology Failure in the Contact Centre.”

The report makes interesting reading and has wide application to those in the project management community. Among some of the highlights are:

1. Between 1/4 and 1/3 of contact centre technology projects get delayed

2. Highest ranked causes of project delay were stakeholder issues, poor planning, a lack of focus from senior management, lack of resources and supplier issues

3. The business impact of delayed projects added an average of 7 months project time and an extra 90% on top of the original project budget

4. None of the survey group felt that their organisation was properly tracking the business impact of the delays

5. Nearly 2/3 felt that companies were not tracking project costs effectively

6. Tracking the cost impact of project delays is a key stumbling block; 77% confessed to not knowing cost impacts or only tracking ‘some’

7. Of 23% who did track cost impacts, most of the additional costs was due to having to use project resources for a longer period of time….

8. 23% of the survey group had no idea of the target deliverable benefits of the project. The report went on to identify a lot of intangible benefits e.g. agent experience, business process improvement, brand value

9. Delivering business benefits - 39% rated this as medium; that is the project delivered slight improvement. 23% said the project exceeded anticipated benefits; 21% rated their project’s delivery of benefits as poor, 7% said there was no improvement and 4% said the project made things worse.

10. Service to the customer …service failures!

The report is yet another damning indictment of project management failure. This white paper while focussed on the experience in Contact Centres has much wider application.

Unfortunately, I will be using the stats in future project management events!

You can download the report here