Comments on: One Million Dollars or One Year http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year Just another WordPress site Thu, 06 Nov 2014 02:53:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.41 By: Kris Kelso http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-499 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:20:57 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-499 Chris – I’ve just stumbled across your blog, and this is a great review and sounds like a great book. I think that too many people are in search of the “perfect” answer to common problems such as PPM, organizational structure, process improvement, and service delivery. These are all areas where there is no “destination” – just a journey of continuous improvement and adaptation. No goal is an end goal – every goal is a milestone on the journey.

I will definitely add this one to my reading list. Thanks.

]]> By: Kris Kelso http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-503 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:20:00 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-503 Chris – I’ve just stumbled across your blog, and this is a great review and sounds like a great book. I think that too many people are in search of the “perfect” answer to common problems such as PPM, organizational structure, process improvement, and service delivery. These are all areas where there is no “destination” – just a journey of continuous improvement and adaptation. No goal is an end goal – every goal is a milestone on the journey.

I will definitely add this one to my reading list. Thanks.

]]> By: joanne http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-498 Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:46:05 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-498 So you can disqualify my comments if you like, I’m a vendor, but what I have seen is that just giving a CIO visibility into where resources are, how much things are costing and giving him the ability to make smart choices when under pressure or resources are constrained is 50% of the battle. Of course you will see through me right away and know I’m trying to position Clarity PPM for IT, but the point is Clarity or whatever, seeing what’s going on is so incredibly important to informed decision making and any governance process, it would surprise me if they don’t have such a tool or contemplating one. But money is tight and PPM costs bucks and its a luxury right now, not a must have. Here I say, nope…PPM has incredible tangible benefits. Let me tell you a quick story: Pharma CIO in LA was called up by his CEO and told, cut 20M out of the budget now. CIO was completely freaked out because he had just let hundreds of people go and was down to the bone. So he pulled up his brand new Clarity dashboard, figured out what was absolutely essential and what wasn’t, killed 6 projects and found the 20M. Now does that sound like a nice to have luxury tool. Absolutely not. In fact our studies from MIT have shown that proper ITG in general have dramatic impacts on the overall profitability of a company. Failed projects are the worst. I used to be in IT, and I can tell you, everyone from IT to business hated that feeling. Anyway, that’s my story. Visibility is empowerment and gives the CIO’s the decision support they need. Hope that wasn’t too “salesy”, but I’m pretty passionate about helping customers. And this one in particular was very gratifying. Joanne

]]> By: joanne http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-502 Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:46:00 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-502 So you can disqualify my comments if you like, I’m a vendor, but what I have seen is that just giving a CIO visibility into where resources are, how much things are costing and giving him the ability to make smart choices when under pressure or resources are constrained is 50% of the battle. Of course you will see through me right away and know I’m trying to position Clarity PPM for IT, but the point is Clarity or whatever, seeing what’s going on is so incredibly important to informed decision making and any governance process, it would surprise me if they don’t have such a tool or contemplating one. But money is tight and PPM costs bucks and its a luxury right now, not a must have. Here I say, nope…PPM has incredible tangible benefits. Let me tell you a quick story: Pharma CIO in LA was called up by his CEO and told, cut 20M out of the budget now. CIO was completely freaked out because he had just let hundreds of people go and was down to the bone. So he pulled up his brand new Clarity dashboard, figured out what was absolutely essential and what wasn’t, killed 6 projects and found the 20M. Now does that sound like a nice to have luxury tool. Absolutely not. In fact our studies from MIT have shown that proper ITG in general have dramatic impacts on the overall profitability of a company. Failed projects are the worst. I used to be in IT, and I can tell you, everyone from IT to business hated that feeling. Anyway, that’s my story. Visibility is empowerment and gives the CIO’s the decision support they need. Hope that wasn’t too “salesy”, but I’m pretty passionate about helping customers. And this one in particular was very gratifying. Joanne

]]> By: Mike McClure http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-497 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:32:29 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-497 My experience with the inner workings of IT departments in large organisations is, sadly, well in line with your excerpts from this book.

Part of the problem is project governance. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very vocal supporter of formal governance – it’s just that there are not usually *appropriate* levels of governance around IT in large organisations.
What I have observed are the startup costs (forming committees, lobbying for executive approval, and other such formalities) combined with delivery costs (arm’s length handover to the outsourcer, user training, and sufficient documentation) mean that no project of significance can be completed in under 6 months. In terms of time, the actual build phase is often under 25% of the total project duration when you consider the time from idea inception to production deployment.

Another part of this problem is on the cash side of the equation. Each organisation has what I call a “terminal velocity” for project expenditure. No matter how things are scaled up, the amount of change that can be implemented flatlines after a certain expenditure. Increasing the project size beyond the terminal velocity doesn’t actually net any extra speed.

I have found that organisations are often aware of the inadequacies of their project governance arrangements but are unable to see how they can change them (“too hard”) or are unwilling to challenge them (“it’s always been done this way”).
I have not found many organisations who are aware of their terminal velocity, despite having a lot of evidence from previous projects.

However when I point out that, historically, projects over a certain size tend to be considered failures within the organisation, people are often amazed that they had not noticed that trend before and are now open to new ideas.
The root causes of this terminal velocity are often hard to change but armed with the awareness, projects can be kept under this danger threshold.

]]> By: Mike McClure http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-501 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:32:00 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-501 My experience with the inner workings of IT departments in large organisations is, sadly, well in line with your excerpts from this book.

Part of the problem is project governance. Don’t get me wrong, I am a very vocal supporter of formal governance – it’s just that there are not usually *appropriate* levels of governance around IT in large organisations.
What I have observed are the startup costs (forming committees, lobbying for executive approval, and other such formalities) combined with delivery costs (arm’s length handover to the outsourcer, user training, and sufficient documentation) mean that no project of significance can be completed in under 6 months. In terms of time, the actual build phase is often under 25% of the total project duration when you consider the time from idea inception to production deployment.

Another part of this problem is on the cash side of the equation. Each organisation has what I call a “terminal velocity” for project expenditure. No matter how things are scaled up, the amount of change that can be implemented flatlines after a certain expenditure. Increasing the project size beyond the terminal velocity doesn’t actually net any extra speed.

I have found that organisations are often aware of the inadequacies of their project governance arrangements but are unable to see how they can change them (“too hard”) or are unwilling to challenge them (“it’s always been done this way”).
I have not found many organisations who are aware of their terminal velocity, despite having a lot of evidence from previous projects.

However when I point out that, historically, projects over a certain size tend to be considered failures within the organisation, people are often amazed that they had not noticed that trend before and are now open to new ideas.
The root causes of this terminal velocity are often hard to change but armed with the awareness, projects can be kept under this danger threshold.

]]> By: Peter Kretzman http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-496 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:03:30 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-496 IT’s inner workings? The recurring one, for me, has to be hearing “we don’t like that estimate”, coming from stakeholders, senior management, etc. Depending on the mood and/or semi-intellectual rigor of the person saying it, the conversation then typically devolves into one or more of the following: a) identifying and removing any hint of contingency (which is of course seen as padding just to make life easier for IT); b) repeated discussion of “what if we double the team size to get it done twice as fast” etc.; c) scrutiny, one by one, of the bottom-up estimates (“it won’t REALLY take three days to test THAT feature”); d) volunteering resources (usually less than qualified) to “help”; e) scheduling full-time work for all remaining weekends and holidays between now and the desired launch; f) frequent use of the phrase “why don’t you just …”

This is not an exaggeration. It rests on the CIO’s shoulders most of all to cut these “solutions” off at the pass.

]]> By: Peter Kretzman http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-500 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:03:00 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-500 IT’s inner workings? The recurring one, for me, has to be hearing “we don’t like that estimate”, coming from stakeholders, senior management, etc. Depending on the mood and/or semi-intellectual rigor of the person saying it, the conversation then typically devolves into one or more of the following: a) identifying and removing any hint of contingency (which is of course seen as padding just to make life easier for IT); b) repeated discussion of “what if we double the team size to get it done twice as fast” etc.; c) scrutiny, one by one, of the bottom-up estimates (“it won’t REALLY take three days to test THAT feature”); d) volunteering resources (usually less than qualified) to “help”; e) scheduling full-time work for all remaining weekends and holidays between now and the desired launch; f) frequent use of the phrase “why don’t you just …”

This is not an exaggeration. It rests on the CIO’s shoulders most of all to cut these “solutions” off at the pass.

]]> By: uberVU - social comments http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-495 Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:00:18 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-495 Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by cbcurran: Book Review: IT’s Hidden Face by Claude Roeltgen (pls RT – free book for top comments!) #CIO http://bit.ly/5HlU4p…

]]> By: Tweets that mention CIO Book Review | ITs Hidden Face | Claude Roeltgen — CIO Dashboard -- Topsy.com http://rocketpanther.com/ciostage/book-review/one-million-dollars-or-one-year#comment-494 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:32:09 +0000 http://www.ciodashboard.com/?p=1589#comment-494 […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Chris Curran, Elliot Ross. Elliot Ross said: RT @cbcurran: Book Review: IT's Hidden Face by Claude Roeltgen (pls RT – free book for top comments!) #CIO http://bit.ly/5HlU4p […]

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