No matter what era we are in right now – computerisation, digital transformation, client server, cloud computing etc – deploying IT projects is just plain stressful!
Many among you, hardcore ICT project delivery veterans would likely shake your heads thinking, That’s an understatement!”
There has to be a better way. But the better way is not necessarily any less stressful and could even create more headaches.
I turn to a famous quote by a very experienced enterprise architect in the industry, Aaron Tan Dani, who has observed that there is a high rate of IT project failures. “If we likened IT projects to surgeries, there would be a huge number of people dying on the operating table!”
There has to be a better way. And yes it does create more headaches because it requires egos and politics to be put aside, and active listening to finally happen.
Because the battle-hardened among you already know, its Business Requirements that drives IT at the end of the day. And Business requirements are driven by Business Objectives.
Tan Dani has observed, “A typical experience may be that the business doesn’t know the correct requirements either and ‘incomplete’ requirements lead to IT implementing ‘garbage’ systems!”
Mampu, our local public sector CTO, or more specifically its Director-General Datuk Seri Zainal Rahim Seman, has come out in a recent NST news report and said it, “We don’t want public agencies to work in siloes but integrate with other agencies in delivering efficient and effective products and services to the people.”
To do that they had launched a 1GovEA last October, a national EA (enterprise architecture) blueprint. The Mampu DG further described in the report that EA is a mechanism for the alignment of their business and ICT, to achieve “greater integration and collaboration among internal business entities and cross-agency entities.”
IT BYTES BACK! says: In this particular case, Malaysia’s public sector is TRUMPING the local private sector, with earlier realisation of the high rate of IT project failures and are taking measures to address it by heeding current global IT trends.
