The Project Doomsday List

A sure way to have a FAILED T24 project is to go into the effort with no planning or little planning, a "cavalier" attitude, and worst of all the belief that the vendor will do it all. That about sums up how most clients approach this sort of work AND how most clients wind up with a failed project.

1. How to have a GUARANTEED project failure--ANSWER: Don't know what you want, do not have a current business analysis and requirements list to use to "evaluate" T24, and in particular sit back and listen to the "we can change it later" talk from the vendor - this will assure that your project has at least a 70% chance of failure and a 100% chance of being done poorly, not passing user acceptance testing, and costing a lot of money to fix

2. Relying on substandard consultants (you need to check them out yourself first before you let them on the project)--this is going to give you a headache and your project staff too. You will mostly likely NOT have trained and experienced T24 people on your regular, full-time staff. Hence you will be "going in blind" on the configuration of the system and relying 100% on the vendor's consultants who I can guarantee you will report only the "positive" and none of the "negative" of the project to you. They will not give you accurate assessments of their progress nor will they tell you when something is not going according to plan. They will come up with excuses to get rid of you and before you know it on a FIXED PRICE project you have a "finished" and "ready to go" system that will not work. Then the vendors are gone when the money is gone and that's it. Back to square one.

3. Getting "tunnel vision" where you see work going on but you do not know what exactly the vendor's people are doing day by day. This is what leads to the client becoming "accustomed" to their routine which may involve more time of the vendor's staff consulting on the telephone and internet with previous clients who are in trouble and not doing the specified amount of work for you. Beware of this old trick.

4. The old "we're waiting on a software patch" game. This means they are stuck with something they cannot configure on the system or the system will not work as you, the client, have specified.

5. LAST BUT NOT LEAST, the consultants on your T24 project are away from work more than they should be or you have a "revolving door" every week of consultants who are coning in to do specialized or certain peripheral work. DO NOT BUY THIS STORY. The best T24 projects have the same team, every day, until you go LIVE.