Triangle Blog

This is the second entry concerning the common reasons behind IT project failures. There are many reasons of course, but hopefully I’ll pick up some of the biggest and most common.

2/ Make sure everybody knows, understands, and accepts what the result of the project will be.

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A company embarks on a software development project because something in the business needs improving. It normally involves either becoming more accurate and efficient or extending capabilities. In either case there’s no room for entering into a development contract lightly. It’s your business you’re going to impact so make sure it’s a positive impact.

Over the next few entries I’m going to explore the main reasons for failure in IT projects and how you can avoid them.

1/ Don’t start work until you know what you are trying to achieve.

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“42% of workers are working with inaccurate information”. Thats a quote from a recent IBM advert, backed up by research done by Accenture.

This figure may shock you but my comment is - I’m surprised it’s so low!

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Like most businesses, Triangle Software will be shutting down for the Christmas period soon. We’re closing sometime on Christmas Eve but I know some businesses have already started closing a week earlier.

Somebody outside the business commented to me that this meant a lot of lost productivity and they were quite proud to be closing only for the statutory holidays. I have to say I am quite passionately opposed to that attitude for all sorts of reasons.

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We’ve been looking long and hard at the value proposition offered by bespoke software development. Particularly in tough economic times, why should anyone choose to spend significant amounts of money on software to run their business?

I think the answer changes depending on the health of your business.

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It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, or how profitable your business is; if your customers are not paying you then you are not really in business at all.

I’d take it further and say that until the money is in the bank you shouldn’t even consider a sale as a sale.

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I heard someone talking to a non-techie recently in a thriving small business. They were trying to illustrate the importance of software in the business, so they asked the question

“If I took away your software, how would your business run?”

The person was suitably shocked with the idea of running the business with all of the computers rendered useless.

It got me thinking about an obvious follow on question that was never asked;

“If I improved your software instead of taking it away, how would your business run?” (more…)

It seems that these days, you can’t open a business newspaper without reading that another company has become a “victim of the economic downturn”. But becoming a victim in the newspaper writer’s eyes might not mean that they have gone out of business; it might mean they have been acquired by a healthier outfit or merged with another firm to make one strong entity which will survive, and more to the point so will the person who owns it.

As a business owner with a smallish company that has done more than survive during the good times, you’ve probably had a good standard of living without getting rich. You’ve probably also provided a decent living for 3 or 4 other people into the bargain and kept a healthy number of clients satisfied with the personal level of service a smaller company can provide. (more…)

Many companies have evolved from one or two man start-ups. During their evolution they naturally use whatever skills and tricks they know to survive and grow. They will often have found that somebody in the company knows Access or Excel and they have used theses skills to develop ad-hoc computer systems.

At this stage, every business owner should now ask the questions; is this really the best use of valuable staff who could be focussing on our own business, and is it likely that we now have a reliable solution on which to rest our business.

Here are a few reasons why you might reconsider having the guy in accounts knock up his own Access database, or think again about using multiple spreadsheets with ever more complex calculations all feeding each other, to run your business. (more…)