BEST PRACTICE 3

73 percent of CIOs say: Involve user representatives in all stages of IT projects

People Use Your Systems, Remember? How to work user preferences into IT initiatives

Users are "who you're building the systems for, so they have to be involved", was the consensus of our best practices CIOs. They pointed out that most systems failures can be attributed to inadequate user involvement.

In answering "The State of the CIO 2004" survey, 73 percent of CIOs said user representatives from affected departments or functions should be involved in all stages of IT initiatives. Many CIOs know that getting line users involved early can increase a project's chances of success. But figuring out who to invite to the party and how to get them involved can be the real challenge, particularly in large or far-flung enterprises. Here's how leading CIOs do it.

Find the Expert Users In most instances - and certainly in larger organizations - getting all users involved in IT initiatives would be a logistical impossibility. Our best practices CIOs suggested that it's better to focus on getting the right end users engaged.

For major IT initiatives, one CIO said his project leaders work with a core team of experts from the corporate and business levels, as well as a group of field representatives who are nominated by their local managers to join a geographically dispersed team for each major initiative.

For example, when IT was building a new billing system, the project manager needed to talk to local office users in areas such as receivables, billing, and credit and collections. So he contacted senior managers in each functional area, asking them to nominate their best and brightest to help out. Once the hard work of locating the right users is done, convincing them to take part is relatively easy, the CIO said. "[These users] like to be actively engaged in what we're doing, and they take pride in being aware of all the new things coming down the road," he explained.

Typically, a project team will handle all of the planning for a new system and provide all the technical expertise. If necessary, team members conduct site visits to ensure that they understand the system requirements.

Seek Out the Doubters For any major IT initiative, one best practices CIO always involves one set of end users: the informed sceptics. "They're public enemy number one because they can bring IT projects to a screeching halt," the CIO said. "But if you involve them up front, they can be a good barometer for how the project is proceeding."

Locating the Doubting Thomases wasn't hard. "They tend to be subject matter experts, and they're pretty well-known because they're vocal and they're often the creators of the systems IT is trying to replace," the CIO explained. Depending on the amount of time each user could offer, the CIO either assigned them to the project's steering committee or the project management team.

Nay-saying users have a strong set of views, but if you can win them over, the sceptics end up being the early adopters and thought-leaders who influence others

Keep a Check on User Involvement While involving users is important, there is a caveat: Don't let them hijack a project. It's a lesson one CIO learned the hard way: "[The users] ended up turning the new system into something that looked just like the old system. You want users involved; just don't let them drive," the CIO said. Having a forceful IT project leader to keep things on track and set parameters for user involvement can help prevent change-averse users from seizing too much control of a technology initiative.

So that change-wary users don't drag their feet when new systems are announced, our best practices CIOs said it's key bring to bring users into the project process early. And, according to the CIOs, part of how you avoid feet dragging is through education.

"A lot of our [project development] strategy is focused on bringing users up to speed as quickly as we can on the new capabilities these systems have to offer," one CIO said. "We look at education and appointing people to become part of the team as a way to get those old ideas out of their head and show them how things can be done differently."

Leverage Power Users At the start of each IT initiative, one best practices CIO said he identifies super users at facilities that will be affected by new projects. These knowledgeable, interested users help with all stages of projects, from requirements definition to post implementation support. But they are most critical during the implementation and training phase. The CIO's suggestion was to start the rollout of new technology at the division or unit that your team has identified as most receptive to change, based on a willingness to commit resources to the proposed project.