The ABC for implementing projects

Back from my holiday and it was wonderful, South Africa is such a beautiful place. This time I drove along the “Garden route” with the coast on one side and the mountains on the other it was truly stunning, oh and vineyards dotted along the way - perfect!

Also back travelling as usual, this week I’ve been at the ITSMF annual event in Antwerp, Belgium, with over 300 delegates. The keynote speaker was Paul Wilkinson, co-author of the book ‘IT Service Management from Hell” and co-owner of Gaming Works (of simulation games fame, such as ‘Apollo 13’and ‘The Challenge of Egypt’). Paul made a great opening address with the “ABC’s of ICT”. So what are the ABC’s? Well really quite simple, but it always appears impossible for organisations to be cognisant of and manage. This is the main reason for so many IT project failures including many ITIL ones. Paul first gave this presentation 10years ago, and shamefully for the industry it’s still relevant.  A is for Attitude, B is for Behaviour and C is for Cultural change. So many times we focus on the Process, Products and event Partners but still fail on the People side of ITIL v3’s 4 “P”’s to manage the ABC’s.

Check out Paul’s book on “The IT Service Management from Hell”, whilst it comical with cartoons, it’s sad with reality and worth a read to see how we address this problem. The first step as always, is with “Me”. We need to start owning and understanding the problem and little by little others will get the message and work on the ABC’s together. We, Atwell Williams, George Spalding from Pink Elephant and I,  wrote a white paper recently on “ cultural change and enabling the implementation of BSM” which is also worth a read in this area.

It was my opportunity to present later and it was now my responsibility to bring in the ABC elements into my presentation. My opening was to quote my very own CEO, Bob Beauchamp, who said a few years back now that “There is no such thing as an IT project; there are Business Projects supported by IT”. If we all starting thinking like this statement, then all we do will be related back to the Business, changing our Attitude with the inevitable Behavioural changes to ensure we only carry out our role in reflection to the business and the Culture will change as we all begin to think in this way.

So please consider the ABC’s and that all projects are Business projects supported by IT, hopefully we then become much more successful in delivering working, accepted solutions.