"Psst, Pass It down"

By Kim Wilkes
Executive Vice President

Have you ever played the old party game where you whisper a statement to the person next to you and they pass it down the line? Most of the time, the last person to hear the statement is told something entirely different. Our communication regarding business processes too often ends with the same result.

I recently saw a survey that cited why a significant number of software projects fail or are deemed “challenged.” Two of the top reasons given for these failures were lack of user involvement and poorly-defined requirements. When developing new processes and software, it is vital to get the necessary information from those who do the work—and this doesn’t mean just one or two people. Most, if not all, who are doing the work should be involved in the fact-gathering. From my experience conducting redesign workshops, I have found there are always cases of someone defining a work process and someone else saying, “That’s not the way I was trained” or “I have a better way to do that.”

Think about what would happen if only one of the two people was the primary source for gathering process steps during the requirements definition phase of a process change. The process would have two different maps of steps, and the resulting requirements would most likely be poorly defined or sub-optimized.

Another important reason for seeking as much involvement as possible is to make sure that all of the steps of a process are necessary and ultimately add value. The same survey found that in failed projects, many of the requested features were never used. This is often a direct result of not thoroughly questioning the value of each step in the process before defining what is required.