Project Planning is a waste of time!!!
Maurice Perks
IBM Fellow
IBM Academy
Maurice_Perks@uk.ibm.com
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Unless …………..
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Warning…………………
• This presentation may make you sit up and argue
• If it doesn’t it has failed
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
The focus of this presentation
The world of Enterprise Computing
The role of Technical Leaders
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Let’s characterise the IT project world
that we live in ………….
•
•
Many large projects fail
– What’s a large project?
• More than 1 person for more than 1 day
– What’s failure?
• Delivery of agreed business function, on time and to agreed
budget doesn’t happen
The larger the project the more chance of failure
– Lots of supporting evidence
– Some say that it is getting worse
– Lots of books written on the subject
• But it’s not just Project Size it’s also a factor called..
– New Stuff
•
All too often we ignore the real effects of New Stuff
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What’s at the heart of the problem?
• We have a optimistic belief that Project Plans are
correct
• The Plan, like the customer, is always right
•
Here’s the plan and we have a lot of detail to back up this plan
–
–
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–
•
We’ll deliver you a new system using exciting new technology
83 people will do this
It will take 6 months
It will cost X k dollars
8 months later
–
–
–
We don’t have a new system
134 people are still trying
We have spent 1.5X k dollars
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What’s the Solution?
• Call a Review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– Detail is the focus!!!
– Stand back is the focus!!!
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What’s the Answer?
• Poor Execution of the Plan!!!
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
The Answer is Rarely
• Sorry the Plan is wrong
– We really didn’t understand the difficulty and
complexity of some of the tasks
• What’s the problem???
– Well at least one of them.
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Our IT world is one of rapid
technology change
• We often don’t realise the effects of this
technology change on IT projects in particular
on the planning process.
– Don’t blame the planners the blame lies with us, the technical
community
• We, The Technical Leaders, don’t point-out to
project planners that New Technology and the
Skills are Unknown Subject Areas
– Basing plans on current knowledge is often very optimistic
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What should we look for and call out?
•
Any New Types of Components and/or Techniques and Practices
– Examples from the past:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Workstations replacing Green Screens then
Webservers replacing C/S Servers then
Mobiles replacing Workstations
C replacing Cobol then
Java replacing C
IP addressing replacing fixed addressing
Unix replacing proprietary operating systems
Linux replacing Unix
OO replacing Structured Programming
System management
Grid Computing replacing whatever it replaces
Any new component being inserted into an E2E flow that has to interface with
old/existing components
• Etc.. Etc..
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What’s The Problem?
• Simply: we don’t always have the right knowledge and
experience about the new stuff:
– How the new stuff works
• Performance
• Recovery
• Interface characteristics
– How to ‘program’ the new stuff
• Design of programming
• Key interfaces
• Best Practices
– How we might manage the new stuff
• As a component
• Within an E2E system
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What should we, The Technical
Leaders do?
• We must influence the Project Planning process to
make sure that the original Plan takes into account
that certain phases and tasks within a project will take
longer than we might normally expect.
• Because
– We lack basic knowledge, there is a learning curve
– There are no standard metrics, by definition
– There are no Best Practices, by definition
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What are some Rules of Thumb for
New Components and Practices
• New Components or Connectivity
– Performance Metrics often don’t exist for Version 1
of components
• Triple the Performance Engineering effort and add special
skills
– Recovery Characteristics won’t be well-understood
• Double the normal recovery design and testing effort
– If there isn’t a Red Book (how to install) on the new
component and you know that you need one
• Double everything!!!!
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What are some Rules of Thumb for
New Components and Practices
• New Programming environments
– Basic Programming Skills will be in short supply
and will be raw
• Double any estimates, finding or training takes time
– Testing tools won’t exist
• Triple any testing/proving estimates, mistakes will be
made
– Good Design Skills and Best Practices won’t exist
• Triple any design estimates because you are probably
going to have to redesign twice!
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
What are some Rules of Thumb for
New Components in ‘Old’ Systems
• Normally they don’t fit!!!!!!! Why should
they?
– The answer is always Adapters of one sort
or another
• Perks’ Law on Adapter Sizing
Whatever you think the effort is to produce an adapter
from scratch it will be 10 times too small
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
So what must we not do?
• We must not sit back and watch,
observe, and make learned judgements
after the event because this leads to
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Poor execution of the plan
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
It leads to people saying……..
Project Planning is a waste of time!!!
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Unless …………..
we, The Technical Leaders,
stand-up at the Planning Stage
and explain the effects of the
‘New Stuff’
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
So what’s the next ‘New Stuff’ for
enterprises?
• It’s probably….
• The real integration of systems and their
applications
– That is producing the real Integrated Enterprise
System
• This is going to be HARD
• We must say that is going to be HARD and
therefore will take time, if we don’t
Planning these Projects really will be a waste of
time
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Warning…………………
• This presentation should have made you sit up
and argue
• If it didn’t it has failed
• Don’t be afraid to stand-up it won’t hurt ….
12/07/2016
IBM Global Services
© Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.