Agile Business Change Blog Thoughts on Agile Strategic Business Change and Agile Delivery

22

DEC

Project failure, unintended consequences and people

22 DEC 2010 | Posted in agile methodology | Author Anthony Flack | 2 Comments

Why do projects fail to run as successfully and logically as they should given all the time, effort and resources expended?

Project failure expressed as a financial or time related overrun, or plain simple non-delivery, will be a familiar story to many of us. An often quoted view is that 70% of all changes fail at implementation. Management Consultants utilise such facts to try and justify a better or alternative approach. If the 70% fact is scrutinised enough, some will describe the fact as a fallacy, as surely the change does not fail entirely? The change may not work as intended or put another way, may have other unintended consequences.

The experience and impact of the unintended consequences (normally negative) can take many forms, both functional, technical and of course on the users, the people. One of the most frequently cited reasons for unintended consequences are people. Reference to ownership, buy in, communication, engagement and of course resistance are often held accountable for failed change.

Is it really appropriate to place people as the central cause of such failures, or is it more likely to be a failing of the interaction between people and the complex, changing environment that some of the longer running projects exist in? People are often described as being highly adaptive, yet this is inconsistent with the view that people resist change; people understandably resist bad change, the previously experienced unintended consequences lead to negative expectations the next time around.

The literature on change is vast and full of many different points of view. It strikes me that successful change needs to deal with the complex and changing project landscape in a fashion that optimises the experience of implementation with the end user. It is our challenge to find a path through this complexity.

So where does this leave us?

People are central to the cause and the prevention of unintended consequence. It is the responsibility of the leaders to deliver the success of the project. I would pose that a better approach needs an architecture that combines both the concepts of Agile, to unwind the length and complexity of change into manageable batches; coupled with people who are enabled by the leaders of the change to understand and succeed.