{"id":1258,"date":"2014-02-04T17:06:23","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T22:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/?p=1258"},"modified":"2016-08-23T11:48:56","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T15:48:56","slug":"if-you-dont-build-it-theyre-gonna-stay-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/2014\/02\/if-you-dont-build-it-theyre-gonna-stay-home\/","title":{"rendered":"If you don’t build it, they’re gonna stay home."},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is also posted to my Intelink blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"an<\/a>The movie “Field of Dreams<\/a>” popularized the phrase, “If you build it, he will come.”\u00a0 (Often misquoted as “Build it, and they will come”)\u00a0 I’ve often heard people in Federal IT deriding this idea:<\/p>\n

We’re not gonna do, “Build it, and they will come.”\u00a0 We know that doesn’t work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sympathetic to this stance.\u00a0 The government has built a lot of systems that didn’t get used to their potential, because there wasn’t a real<\/em> requirement; there was a theory about a requirement. \u00a0 Or maybe because it didn’t get advertised, or the training wasn’t adequate. \u00a0Or the user needs changed before it fielded. \u00a0Or whatever.<\/p>\n

IT projects don’t always work, but beware of learning the wrong lesson from failure. \u00a0It is even more true that:<\/p>\n

If you don’t build it, they’re gonna stay home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thomas Watson famously said “If you would succeed, double your failure rate.” \u00a0The angst about “Build it, and they will come” for IT systems presumes that failure is not okay. \u00a0If we want innovation, we need to try new things. \u00a0Sometimes those things aren’t going to work. \u00a0 That should be normal and not a cause for lamentation.<\/p>\n

It is normal for IT projects to fail.\u00a0 In 2009, 72 percent of major federal IT projects were on the OMB Management Watch list.\u00a0 Statistics vary, but it’s not uncommon for Gartner\/Forrester-type studies to note that anywhere from 30-50% of IT projects fail. (sometimes higher)<\/p>\n

What if business executives (or government executives) started treating the high probability of failure as a fact of life? I believe a recognition of failure as a fact of life should lead to more<\/strong> investments in smaller<\/strong> projects with higher ROI thresholds<\/strong>. If projects often fail, it makes sense to try more things, because half of them won’t work. If projects often fail, then they should start small, and grow the early successes with the most promise. If there are more projects, they should be trying for dramatic, transformational savings. IT projects are inherently risky investments; they fail a lot. If I’m going to make a risky investment, I expect it to have a correspondingly big potential payoff.<\/p>\n

Also, a business case analysis for a project doesn’t need to be incontrovertible, and it doesn’t need to be exhaustive. \u00a0A BCA needs only be sufficiently persuasive to convince the decision maker that the investment is worth the risk.<\/p>\n

The worst of all worlds, would be to so afraid of failure that you only build the absolute-sure-thing<\/i>. \u00a0Because, chances are, that will fail too, and you will have missed out on the risky, transformational thing that your competitors\/adversaries did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is also posted to my Intelink blog. The movie “Field of Dreams” popularized the phrase, “If you build it, he will come.”\u00a0 (Often misquoted as “Build it, and they will come”)\u00a0 I’ve often heard people in Federal IT deriding this idea: We’re not gonna do, “Build it, and they will come.”\u00a0 We know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risacher.org\/jfdi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}