ERP Projects Fail - Telling the Truth is the Real Success

Note to reader this blog is a little longer than usual – sorry but try and stick with it till the end. 😊 Enjoy!

As I have mentioned numerous times in my blogs, I have done ERP Project Management work for a long, long time (with grey hair and wrinkles to prove it 😊). I have learned one critical factor that makes ERP Project successful – maybe I should stop here and make sure that we understand the true meaning of success – it is about being completely honest as the Project Manager – whether you’re in the Client or Consultant Project Manager role.

This is about establishing trust and it is the same in any relationship. With trust comes respect; with respect comes commitment; with commitment comes success; and my philosophy is that “Success is the Progressive Realization of a Worthwhile Dream” – Unknown. Feel free to “change dream to goal” in that last sentence if it helps cement the philosophy for you.

Before, I go deeper into how trust leads to success – let me step back and discuss the Project Manager Role on an ERP project. Many people think that the project team reports to the Project Manager. That is the way we draw the boxes on the organizational chart that we show during the Kick-off meeting but that is fundamentally wrong. I have a very different expectation of myself when I am in the Project Manager role – I am there to remove obstacles for the project team; provide them clear expectations on deliverables and help educate them on the work that needs to be done, and believe me, they do the real work to make the implementation a success. I’ll stop here as I have another blog coming on the role of the Project Manager in ERP Implementation success.

Let’s get back to how Telling the Truth is the real measure of ERP project success. Let me share a story about what happened to me 10 years ago.

I was running an ERP project for a world-renowned transportation company in Montreal. The project was massive in scale (250 people on the project), duration (2+ years), complexity (never built custom application), and cost (about $1 million dollars per week – you do the math 😊).

It was an amazing project to be part of and the pinnacle of my career. I had it all – I had the best consultants in the company on my team from all over North America; a fantastic team of developers in India and one of the most supportive and knowledgeable clients I have ever had the pleasure to work with – plus we were going to build a new product that would revolutionize the transportation industry.

Oh, did I mention that it is also the only “failure” in my career. Total “failure”, we didn’t deliver the final product or deploy the solution; but I had an experience about the importance of truth in project success that I will never forget.

I had the pleasure of working with 2 client Project Managers on the project – let’s call them Len and Franca – because those are their names 😊 (hope they and others who were part of the project get to read and comment on this). Len was the Business Project Manager; Franca represented the IT perspective of the organization and I was the Project Manager for the implementation firm. We are passionate people (to say the least 😊) about project management and didn’t always see eye to eye, but we were truthful and respectful to each other (most of the time) and fortunately this had also been the case with executives at our two organizations.

18 months into the project there was a $5 million dollar milestone payment for my firm based on the completion of key deliverables being developed in India. Long story short (I know too late😊), I discovered there were issues with a tracking spreadsheet and a complete area of functionality was missing. The problem was that we had communicated to the Steering Committee and Board of Directors that we had completed the work.

All hell broke loose…screaming, finger pointing, naming calling, profanity and then Len, Franca and I told our bosses 😊. That set off a chain reaction up the organizational hierarchies of both organizations.

Now, I am a true believe that the “buck stops” with me on any engagement where I am Project Managing, because again as I say on my website –

"When a project goes well it's because of the team; when it goes badly it's because of the Project Manager."

Well things were going badly. Len, Franca, and I, were all called to a meeting with the Steering Committee and I explained that an administrative misunderstanding occurred, and the plan to get it addressed – and then the worst thing happened – I watched the core group of 6 people begin to disintegrate right before my eyes. They started accusing each other of lying; I had lied to Len and Franca, my team had lied to me, the developers in India

lied to my Development Lead, the Steering Committee lied to the Board of Directors and apparently the same accusations of lying were happening between CEOs of both companies.

Of course, the client wanted a complete report on how this could happen – and initiated a comprehensive investigation. An executive (Jim) from my organization who had not been involved in the project or with this client was tasked to complete an assessment with recommendations to be submitted to the Client’s Leadership and Board of Directors within 2 weeks.

Let’s face it, I knew what was coming, this was to be a “Careering Lynching” justification for John Talio.

Jim arrived on site and told me that I was not to engage with my team for the next two days until he had completed his investigation. That gave me a lot of time to spend with the client – I was summoned to the CIOs office and told him about the administrative error that happened, I spoke with the IT Director on the project and informed her of the same, finally I met with the Project Business Sponsor (Let’s call him Clarke - because that’s his name) in a small meeting room and it happened.

I started to sob – yup – the big, tough, professional Project Manager broke down in tears. After a few minutes had passed and I composed myself, Clarke asked: “Why are you so upset?”

I responded, “I am watching 2 years of our amazing relationship get destroyed because you don’t trust me” and after a short pause I said, “I completely understand if you want me replaced and for the good of the project.” With that he closed his portfolio, got up and walked out of the room – I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but I knew what was coming next – my interrogation with Jim.

Jim called me into a meeting room and began questioning me like a police detective on T.V. I expected this was coming and just kept telling him the truth about how the spreadsheet tracker was giving us a false status on items completion rates. He said that was a lame excuse and that I should have come up with a “better story”. He tried to get me to find blame with my Development Lead, my Project Coordinator, my Solution Architect but I wouldn’t let him. I told him, “It’s my responsibility and I am accountable - yes we were involved in causing this problem, but it is my job to make sure that things are tracked correctly, and I should have discovered it sooner – no one else but me is to blame.”

Then the whole conversation changed. Jim said that we had tried – “really, really tried” to find someone that was willing to pin the blame on me. No one would, not the client, not my onsite team, not even the people in India, not even my company’s Executive Sponsor who placed me on the assignment in the first place. It was truly a mistake in the administrative process like I had said all along and that he would be putting that and some recommendations on how to improve the tracking log so this wouldn’t happen again.

Finally, Jim told me that the client had met with him prior to our meeting. They told Jim that I had “voluntarily asked if they wanted me removed from the project that I would understand if that was their decision.” My client informed Jim that was not an option and if investigation documentation included a recommendation of my removal from the project that they would cancel the entire project effective immediately.

As you can imagine I was stunned, and Jim left me with one final comment – “Well I guess it’s true – you never get it trouble for telling the truth – people may not like the truth – but it’s up to them how they react.”

Moral of the Story

Don’t get me wrong – I screwed up – Huge!!! But because of 2 plus years of being truthful – they also knew that I was going to do everything in my power to fix the problem and make things better going forward. I said earlier that we didn’t deliver the final solution or come up with an amazing product to sell to all the other transportation companies, but it is one of the proudest moments of my career because at the end of the day everyone associated with the project and especially those on the core team learned that some -

ERP Projects Fail – Telling the Truth is The Real Success

Do you have any stories about Telling the Truth on your projects? I would love to hear them or feel free to comment on this or any of my other blogs. More JT Insights are on the way...hope you register to get them pushed to your inbox.