Stop The Bleeding

Google Gemini Prompt

As the new CIO for a struggling and troubled technology organization, what improvement model or methodology should I use to understand the key organizational deficiencies and execute a plan to improve and modernize the organization?

Restated from Chapter 1 (The Model).

Google Gemini Response

A subset of the Chapter 1 Gemini Response is: The Diagnostic: IT-CMF (IT Capability Maturity Framework): Developed by the Innovation Value Institute (IVI), this framework maps 35 Critical Capabilities (CCs) across four macro-processes. In a struggling org, you don't look at all 35; you focus on the "Emergency Room" categories:

• Managing the IT Budget: Is money leaking into "zombie" projects?

• IT Governance: Who actually makes decisions? (In troubled orgs, it’s usually "whoever screams loudest").

• Capacity Planning: Is the team burned out because they are over-committed?

• Solutions Delivery: Why are projects always late?

Discussion

Armed with the data and insight from the primary assessment, we must stop the organizational bleeding before we tackle the larger, and more time consuming, organizational problems. The enemy is the clock. When looking for blood, the Gemini response offers a good place to start looking: Budget, Governance, Capacity, and Delivery. If the technology organization is hemorrhaging cash, we have to radically adjust spending to compensate. If decisions are not being made rationally and timely, then we need to address and get the decisions made. If capacity is insufficient, then we need to adjust the workload to what can be reliably delivered. If projects are not being completed, we need to find out why and get them done (or terminate them as failed projects to free up the resources to work on viable projects).

It was early winter in 2016 and I had just accepted the IT leadership position at the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). One of the staff members approached me on my second week and said, “Bob, there’s something that we have got to tell you. There is a billion dollars of funding at risk because we can’t get our application to work.” At VDOT, one of our Stop the Bleeding (STB) initiatives was to rebuild the Roadway Network System (RNS) so that the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) annual reports could be submitted. These reports are critical as they demonstrate good stewardship of federal funding. At VDOT, the RNS was in such a poor state that the agency was at risk of not being able to generate a current report which could impact the amount of funding received from the FHWA. A prior year project to “Blitz” the RNS had failed miserably and made the situation even worse. The primary assessment determined that the team was underskilled and spread too thin on multiple projects (many of which were not critical). We brought in an expert database architect and focused the team solely on the RNS project. We established daily and weekly metrics to measure the improvements as we reprocessed the entire RNS network of roads. We slowly saw improvements and were able to get the report completed and submitted on time. In the following year, we finished early. What used to be an annual crisis became a non-event of business as usual (BAU).

At the Virginia IT Agency (VITA), one of our Stop The Bleeding (STB) initiatives was the messaging modernization project. VITA awarded a contract to a vendor to deliver a first in the nation dual messaging (email and collaboration suite) platform that used both Google Workspace (Google) and Microsoft 365 (M365). Customer agencies could pick their platform of choice and it would work as if the entire enterprise was on that one platform. Agencies on Google would appear on M365 as if they were also on M365 and vice versa. The primary assessment identified that the messaging solution relied on a host of third party products to bridge two incompatible platforms. The third party integrations were expensive, not working as anticipated, and the project was over a year behind schedule and losing money daily. The State was not getting the innovative messaging solution they wanted and the vendor was losing money trying to make the impossible work. It was a lose-lose failure of budget, governance, capacity and delivery. From a governance perspective, we selected the messaging platform that was preferred by most agencies (in this case M365), eliminated the less preferred platform and eliminated the third party products that were not working as planned. Consolidating onto a single platform and eliminating products saved money, returned the project to profitability, and eliminated work to free up capacity. With decisions that were inhibitors addressed, project delivery resumed and the project completed without further delays.

The business world is littered with failed or disappointing IT projects. These problems are not new and as experienced IT professionals, we have all been there. What we are collectively concluding is that these problems are too big, complex, and costly to be solved as individuals. When we work together, all of us are better and stronger than some of us. We also need to harness the power of learning and growth to strive to get better with every release. I remember when the first iPhone came out. It was chunky, expensive, hard to use, and underwhelming. There were better devices to make a call. But then the next version came out, the app economy created more functionality, and it was better. Apple sold more devices. Then the next and the next until the iphone dominated the market. Today, my iPhone is fully integrated into my life and I use it to track my health, sleep, food, and a dozen other functions. Each time we complete a cycle, we need to learn from it and get better with every release.