A not insignificant part of working life is determined by change. Why we should resist it? The often quoted and partly critically questioned CHAOS study by The Standish Group represents what many project employees, project managers and not least sponsors unfortunately experience in everyday life: IT projects are not very often successful in all project goals and constraints, sometimes they go completely to shit.
Chaos means disorder
A project is initiated out of an internal or external need for change. Ideally, a sponsor is found who assigns a project manager or PMO to plan the project, and then prepare a project proposal (or assignment) which is then implemented by the project manager.
An essential part of this assignment is the business case, i.e. the weighing of the invested effort against the benefit. With this basis in mind, let’s now look at the CHAOS criteria:
- Type 1: Project successfully completed – all project objectives achieved on time and within budget.
- Type 2: Project partially successful – project objectives partially achieved, or not achieved on time and on budget
- Type 3: Project not successful – the project was cancelled
Now we can philosophize about type 2 as well – what project goals were sacrificed to make it to the end after all, and how relevant were they? How high were the variances in time and budget – where time and budget tend to be related in the typical project „fail cascade“? Either way, 70% of projects today do not achieve all of their intended goals – a problem in my opinion.
The Promise
Now let’s get back to the business case – the sponsor and its steering committee weigh whether the project is worthwhile. And according to the CHAOS survey, in (previously 80%, now 70%) of cases, this initial weighing is subsequently rendered absurd. Projects leave the imposed target corridor and thus question the initial „Yes, we’ll do it!“ decision, sometimes considerably.
What conclusion can we draw from this? The information helps us to re-evaluate our „resistant stakeholders“. The resistance to change, i.e., the defense scheme of the eternally outdated in the organizations in which the noble project knights want to improve the world, has a very understandable reason: it has proven itself. Evolutionarily, this means that the saber-toothed tiger meadows are to be avoided even when it is argued for the fiftieth time that the tastiest berries hang on the bushes there – because nobody flicks them. In terms of projects, this means being careful when making project decisions. Because almost four out of five of these decisions are questioned afterwards, freely according to the motto „If we had known that before!
To recommend to you as a customer to drop the topic of changes and projects completely because of this argumentation would let your company fall behind in the eternal change of market and society, which can neither be in your sense nor in mine. Moreover, it would deprive me of my livelihood, which at least is not in my interest.
What else?
The recommendation is therefore: take your time to decide, be skeptical and let yourself be convinced. Get information, check references, consult additional experts. Put those involved in the project to the test even before the contract is available in draft form. Do the external and internal colleagues involved seem convincing, are they well organized? Is the presentation coherent and will it stand up to scrutiny?
Success is equal parts the right people and the right methodology, so invest sufficient time and money in both. To my project partner colleagues I can also make the request slightly modified: we should not push the customers, and we should make the decision very easy with professional appearance, well prepared decision templates and resilient business case. Last but not least, we should offer our project skeptics an open ear – sometimes (though not always) the biggest project opponent turns out to be a valuable source of feedback.
This way, customer and partner minimize the risk of starting a project that ends up in the unattractive 70%-CHAOS range. Too often, these projects are only completed because the political damage exceeds the additional costs. And that is certainly not in the interest of the parties involved.
Good luck,
