Preview: This One Weird Trick Can Save a Failing Project

It’s no secret that project failure is an albatross around IT’s neck. CIO reports that 50% of businesses had an IT project fail in the prior 12 months. With applications being key to business transformation, organizations can’t afford the risk of project failure. But how do you save a failing project?

This Thursday RightBrain CTO David Thompson will expose the secret technique for project success that your ITIL coach doesn’t want you to know. He’ll explain how to tear down the wall – metaphorically speaking – between your operations and development teams, and unleash the power of DevOps. Register to join us in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or listen to the live webcast.

In the meantime, learn straight from David more about project failure and DevOps benefits:

Obviously, there are costs associated with project failures, but what else is driving the need to reduce failures?

I think the main costs of failing projects are largely hidden. Two that stand out are opportunity cost and morale cost. A major initiative takes time to fail, and if the organization was pinning all their hopes for the future on it, the failure can be unrecoverable by the time it’s acknowledged. Just one of these can sink a SMB.

Morale cost is easier to understand but hard to quantify. Nobody likes losing, and a failing project in its death throes puts extraordinary strain on the team. This can be a major source of burnout, and the impact to the organization as a whole can be extreme due to the contagious effect of toxic morale.

What role does ITIL play in a DevOps organization?

There are various ways to use a framework like ITIL. Applied dogmatically, it’s hard to reconcile with an agile approach, but as a rich toolbox useful components for solving IT problems, I think it’s indispensable.

Aside from reducing project failures, what are some of the other benefits of DevOps?

It depends on your perspective. Individual contributors thrive in a DevOps culture because it fosters communication and collaboration, which creates an environment where they can fully contribute. The benefit to leadership is a gelled engineering team, leading to better estimation, faster delivery and a broader communication channel.

What do you hope that attendees will walk away with after your presentation?

What a smart, funny guy I am would be a great takeaway.

While we can vouch for David’s intellect and sense of humor, we also think he has a lot of great insights to share. We hope you’ll join us on Thursday to see for yourself!