Article: Technology and Software Project Management for SMEs in the UK
by A Khawaja. Published on June 17, 2009.
As a technology consulting firm, we seldom come across small and medium size businesses that know exactly what they’re after. Requirements often start with X and end up as Z. Not Y, but Z.
As is the case with most small businesses, owners and employees usually fit in the category of ‘jack of all trades’. While it’s fair to say that somebody who owns or works for an SME probably has a far better understanding of the dynamics of business and how it operates on all levels, there are some instances where expert help is required and it need not be too structured or expensive.
As someone who has been managing software related projects in the United States and Middle East for almost a decade, I can attest to the fact that managing projects for smaller businesses is more challenging, it’s far more interesting and a whole lot more difficult than managing a development project in a larger company. This happens for various reasons, many of them being related to one’s inability to hide behind bureaucracy, budgetary excuses and the lack of involvement of ownership within the business. However, the basic principles and theory of software development is the same; how well a project is managed irrespective of its size depends to a great extent on experience and expertise of the party managing.
The British market, however, has its own rules. The Office of Government Commerce is one of the few governmental institutions of its kind, setting standards for industry to follow. It’s a scary thought, especially if you follow the track record that most governmental entities have of meeting deadlines and delivering successful projects or technologies. The UK industry and its ‘usual’ experts are ridden with such inefficient suggestions by the GOC or government: PRINCE2, ITIL and P3O are three methodologies that come to mind in this industry. It’s not that these models are flawed; it’s that the source they come from is simply not in a position to make a value statement regarding the subject at hand, especially not when it pertains to SMEs, where efficiency is a prime factor in gauging success.
In the 21st Century, having a government formulate effective project management models (especially those that ‘they’ proclaim should be widely adopted by the Corporates and SMEs) is like having a marketing and advertising firm telling you how to fix the technical portion of your website to achieve SEO results. It’s wrong and shouldn’t happen. The marketing firm should give you advice on what to put on the page that will entice the users that visit it buy, not what will entice Google or Bing to list your website. It is simply not their area of expertise.
So what should SMEs do to get the right advice and manage their projects well? The simple answer is to do what works. You don’t have to go to Deloitte to tell you what you need and you don’t have to go to Microsoft to get it built. Similarly, there is no ‘right’ way to manage technology or software related projects, but the wrong way to do it is without getting any help and by following a generic standard that the most inefficient organization (the government) of them all has setup. It will cost you twice as much and take four times as long as it should. Don’t accept a consultant telling you they’re PRINCE2 qualified or P3O qualified so they will do a great job. There’s a reason why the Americans own some of the world’s best software-related technology: they don’t come under pressure from the Office of Government Commerce in the UK to aspire to stick to a heavily or pointlessly documented or generalized standard of information systems project management.
With our combined decades of software development and project management experience across the US and Middle East, we at VAFTA Solutions are trying to educate small and medium businesses across the UK on how to better manage their projects, how to choose a technology partner and how to oversee their system or software development work. We’ve developed a new model in information systems project management: one that inspires efficiency, produces enough documentation to educate all involved parties, and delivers on a schedule and a budget.
SME owners and employees looking to manage projects should always:
- Focus on what they are after; leave the technology to the professionals.
- Know the dynamics of their audience and all affected parties.
- Understand the business processes.
- Always hear what you have explained to your technology partner or consultant in their language. That’s actually what you’ll get!
- Communicate! Lack of this is why a good 50% of project management fails.
As we document our efforts to cut through the excessive unnecessary standards of the ‘accepted’ norm of failed information systems project management, we’ll be hosting an event in the future for SME owners and directors to up their productivity and results and lower their costs.
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