Project Planning is a waste of time!!! Maurice Perks IBM Fellow IBM Academy Maurice_Perks@uk.ibm.com 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Unless ………….. IBM Global Services 20/11/2018 © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Warning………………… This presentation may make you sit up and argue If it doesn’t it has failed 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

The focus of this presentation The world of Enterprise Computing The role of Technical Leaders 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Let’s characterise the IT project world that we live in …………. Many large projects fail What’s a large project? More than 1 person for more than 1 day What’s failure? Delivery of agreed business function, on time and to agreed budget doesn’t happen The larger the project the more chance of failure Lots of supporting evidence Some say that it is getting worse Lots of books written on the subject But it’s not just Project Size it’s also a factor called.. New Stuff All too often we ignore the real effects of New Stuff 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What’s at the heart of the problem? We have a optimistic belief that Project Plans are correct The Plan, like the customer, is always right Here’s the plan and we have a lot of detail to back up this plan We’ll deliver you a new system using exciting new technology 83 people will do this It will take 6 months It will cost X k dollars 8 months later We don’t have a new system 134 people are still trying We have spent 1.5X k dollars 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Call a Review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What’s the Solution? Detail is the focus!!! Stand back is the focus!!! 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Poor Execution of the Plan!!! What’s the Answer? Poor Execution of the Plan!!! 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Sorry the Plan is wrong The Answer is Rarely What’s the problem??? We really didn’t understand the difficulty and complexity of some of the tasks What’s the problem??? Well at least one of them. 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Our IT world is one of rapid technology change We often don’t realise the effects of this technology change on IT projects in particular on the planning process. Don’t blame the planners the blame lies with us, the technical community We, The Technical Leaders, don’t point-out to project planners that New Technology and the Skills are Unknown Subject Areas Basing plans on current knowledge is often very optimistic 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What should we look for and call out? Any New Types of Components and/or Techniques and Practices Examples from the past: Workstations replacing Green Screens then Webservers replacing C/S Servers then Mobiles replacing Workstations C replacing Cobol then Java replacing C IP addressing replacing fixed addressing Unix replacing proprietary operating systems Linux replacing Unix OO replacing Structured Programming System management Grid Computing replacing whatever it replaces Any new component being inserted into an E2E flow that has to interface with old/existing components Etc.. Etc.. 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What’s The Problem? Simply: we don’t always have the right knowledge and experience about the new stuff: How the new stuff works Performance Recovery Interface characteristics How to ‘program’ the new stuff Design of programming Key interfaces Best Practices How we might manage the new stuff As a component Within an E2E system 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What should we, The Technical Leaders do? We must influence the Project Planning process to make sure that the original Plan takes into account that certain phases and tasks within a project will take longer than we might normally expect. Because We lack basic knowledge, there is a learning curve There are no standard metrics, by definition There are no Best Practices, by definition 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What are some Rules of Thumb for New Components and Practices New Components or Connectivity Performance Metrics often don’t exist for Version 1 of components Triple the Performance Engineering effort and add special skills Recovery Characteristics won’t be well-understood Double the normal recovery design and testing effort If there isn’t a Red Book (how to install) on the new component and you know that you need one Double everything!!!! 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What are some Rules of Thumb for New Components and Practices New Programming environments Basic Programming Skills will be in short supply and will be raw Double any estimates, finding or training takes time Testing tools won’t exist Triple any testing/proving estimates, mistakes will be made Good Design Skills and Best Practices won’t exist Triple any design estimates because you are probably going to have to redesign twice! 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

What are some Rules of Thumb for New Components in ‘Old’ Systems Normally they don’t fit!!!!!!! Why should they? The answer is always Adapters of one sort or another Perks’ Law on Adapter Sizing Whatever you think the effort is to produce an adapter from scratch it will be 10 times too small 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

So what must we not do? We must not sit back and watch, observe, and make learned judgements after the event because this leads to 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Poor execution of the plan 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

It leads to people saying…….. Project Planning is a waste of time!!! 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Unless ………….. we, The Technical Leaders, stand-up at the Planning Stage and explain the effects of the ‘New Stuff’ 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

So what’s the next ‘New Stuff’ for enterprises? It’s probably…. The real integration of systems and their applications That is producing the real Integrated Enterprise System This is going to be HARD We must say that is going to be HARD and therefore will take time, if we don’t Planning these Projects really will be a waste of time 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Warning………………… This presentation should have made you sit up and argue If it didn’t it has failed Don’t be afraid to stand-up it won’t hurt …. 20/11/2018 IBM Global Services © Copyright 2002 by International Business Machines Corporation. All Rights Reserved.