The book is intentionally written in a nontechnical style for managers as well as IT professionals-from programmers to Chief Information Officers (CIOs). The authors present numerous profound principles that can be applied to project management in general, as well as the management of IT projects in particular.
The fundamental concept behind the book is that "managers do not have to become experts in technology to make effective use of it." However, managers do need a new way of thinking about projects and need to learn new patterns of behavior. Half or more of IT projects fail due to what the authors call "IT project disease." Symptoms of this "disease" include project abandonment, missed schedules, cost overruns, and delivery of less than what was expected. The authors offer a new view of this organizational affliction and present a philosophy and approach to cure it.
This new approach to IT project management is called the RITE approach. RITE stands for Revolutionizing IT Effectively. This approach is an integrated collection of observations and principles which provide guidelines to those making decisions regarding IT projects. Some of the fundamental issues addressed by the RITE approach include:
How organizations should think about, organize, and carry out projects.
Who should be accountable for the success of a project?
What is reasonable to expect from a project.
How project success should be defined.
Why limits need to be set on the scope of the project.
You will notice that none of these issues relate solely to IT projects. That is the beauty of this book. Although the authors bring many decades of IT experience to the table, they have distilled principles that apply to any complex task or project.
It should be pointed out that the RITE approach is not a new methodology. It is not sufficient by itself to manage an IT project. As the authors state, "management principles do not take the place of good development practices." In fact, the RITE approach advocates adherence to a strong, disciplined methodology. The book even briefly reviews the latest thinking in methodologies, including the "Agile" methodologies and Extreme Programming (XP). However, the primary focus of the book is on a higher level of thinking which addresses attitudes, assumptions, approaches, and the organizational culture that creates the environment in which projects are managed. "The culture of each organization includes its way of approaching problems and opportunities for improvement. Too often that approach sets up projects for failure."
This book provides a realistic approach for dealing with highly complex and unstructured projects by addressing issues such as scope control, accountability, the reuse of proven ideas, and the need for balance. It also addresses the political realities of implementing the RITE approach. The book discusses how some will want to maintain the status quo, seeing that a change in philosophy and culture might threaten their power and prestige.
IT professionals are in the business of managing complex tasks and projects. Considerable learning has taken place since the publication of the excellent book, The Mythical Man-Month, over 20 years ago. David Andrews and Kenneth Johnson are true IT veterans, and distill their wealth of experience in this easily read book. Although the title of the book might lead you to think it is a technical book written only for IT professionals, I suggest that the principles presented are universal and, if applied, can have a powerful impact on any organization.
(Review by Dr. J Howard Baker)
Several principles put forth are those many of us already knew but never mentioned out loud.
+Despite how much time, money, and attention given at the outset of the project, it is impossible to create a complete plan and cost estimate for an IT project.
+Any complex design will be imperfect.
+Scope control, although unpopular, is absolutely critical.
+There will never be enough resources available to build the optimum solution.
Some insightful tenets I took away.
+Those most familiar with an existing system/design are in a poor position to lead the recommendation of a new one (because of a bias)
+IT professionals like complexity and by their nature tend to bring more complexity into projects.
+Endusers should be 100% accountable for projects.
+Time is a project's worst enemy - as more time passes between approval and deployment, the number of things that can go wrong and the number of assumption that can change increases.
The authors discuss their "RITE Approach", which again is not revolutionary ... or contradictory to other methodologies, but rather offers some common sense best practices that complement waterfall, Agile, and RUP methodologies. The authors self-admittedly bash the waterfall paradigm but then come back and confess that the waterfall is the foundation of all PM methodologies.
Good book to read to insure you're on the right track...
This book is being routed throughout my IT department -- managers, developers, infrastructure and support people. I suggest they read the last chapter first as it is an excellent summary and reference checklist of the points Andrews and Johnson bring to the reader.
Key reminders and points made and expanded upon, for me, include:
1) Just do it -- the perfect solution is never available.
2) Know what goes wrong and what goes right and manage accordingly.
3) Control scope creep, probably the greatest weakness of all of us IT managers who want to be loved by our customers.
4) Managing programmers -- "junior programmers run the world" making those detailed, seemingly low level decisions that can compromise a project implementation.
This is not only a great read but an excellent reference manual for experienced and new IT managers alike -- one of those books we should each read every year! Well done, guys.