So I started to look back at what I had presented on and read decades ago and this is what I found…

For those of a similar age you may remember the Standish Group being famous for  publishing their CHAOS Report with IT project success/failure/challenged rates and an attempt to analyze what could make projects successful.

Even in the 1970’s (and that was 50 years ago 😊) two main success factors (or failings) were executive support & user involvement. This continued into the 90’s, the 00’s and 10’s as reasons. Even today we see studies (most recently from the Project Management Institute and the future of project management practitioners) about the importance of ‘power skills’ of collaboration, strategic thinking and communication that are all synonymous with that ever important skill of building relationships to gain executive buy in and user involvement. You wont get executive buy in and user involvement without communication, strategic alignment with project work and collaborating.

So I began to ask are we just not learning lessons of the past and keep pointing out what we need to do but failing to take it seriously? Why cant we take the time to practice our human skills, our interactions with each other, our ability to connect ahead of learning how to create a plan, a risk assessment, a business case? If we DON’T focus on our human side we will continue to repeat the failures of the past.

Next week – the human factor…