Building the effcetive team is key for project management

Good working relation is the key for Success

Large-scale IT projects are prone to take too long, are usually more expensive than expected, and, crucially, fail to deliver the expected benefits. This need not be the case. Companies can achieve successful outcomes through an approach that helps IT and the business join forces in a commitment to deliver value.

In the second part of of my previous article "9 facts all CIOs should know" I will discuss on importance building an effective team and importance of synergy across the team.

Half of all large IT projects—defined as those with initial price tags exceeding $15 million—massively blow their budgets. On average, large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted.

I found most of the time CIO and CTO don't learn from their previous mistakes or learn from the failure of other projects.

Most of the time CXO failed to build a cohesive team. Building the effective team for program management is critical for success.

Large projects can take on a life of their own in an organization. To be effective and efficient, project teams need a common vision, shared team processes, and a high-performance culture.

To build a solid team, members should have a common incentive structure that is aligned with the overall project goal, in contrast with individual work-stream goals.

A business-to-technology team that is financially aligned with the value-delivery targets will also ensure that all the critical change-management steps are taken and that, for example, communications with the rest of the organization are clear, timely, and precise.

I personally believe the quality of work , resulting from a project is inversely proportional to the number of people involved in the project. Project management is not crowd control.

In 2002 , I was responsible for transformation of Telefonica's billing system. It's a massive complex project but we were on schedule. The main reason was direct involvement of Telefonica's  CEO and a dedicated team with full of motivation and enthusiasm.

My 5  Take Away Points From Billing transformation project of Telefonica

1. The quality of work resulting from a project increases in direct proportion to the degree of involvement by the ultimate decision maker.

2. We didn't have a complicated hierarchy in decision making or reporting.

3. Meetings were well managed. We used to solve problems in meetings instead of just blaming each other.

4. We had a strategic and disciplined project-management office and establishing rigorous processes for managing requirements engineering and change requests. Our project office   established a few strong stage gates to ensure high-quality end products.

At the same time, we followed for a short delivery life cycle to avoid creating waste in the development process.


5. We had a complex multicultural team from Amdocs, Telefonica, KPMG but team were fully aligned to project goal.