California DMV

1. California DMV Ken Peffers UNLV March 2005

2. Recipe For IT Disaster? • Insufficient technical skills in the organization to manage the project • Insufficient conceptual understanding among senior management • Inadequate personnel resources from the consultant • No one individual or committee clearly in charge of the project

3. Technical Skills in the Client Organization • The client organization should have technical personnel on-board with sufficient skill to appreciate the technical issues and understand the technical concepts • If not, it will be difficult to monitor the consultant’s progress and evaluate deviations from scheduled performance

4. IS Conceptual Skills Among Senior Management • Senior management in the client firm is responsible for the business objectives of the project • Middle management responsible to make sure that the components of the system meet the business needs of the firm. • Client firm managers responsibilities: • System meets firm objectives • Components meet business needs • Project progresses on time and within budget • Logic of the system consistent with business processes • Usability of the system • Consultants also responsible for these things

5. Adequate Resources At Consultant • This was a big project for Tandem • Tendency to load up with junior people • Body count substitutes for knowledge

6. No One in Charge of the Project • DMV inexperienced—laggard firm • Insufficient experience to do the vendor selection? • Tandem made a better presentation. • Simple benchmark tests insufficient • Resources available • Visits to reference sites • Oversight from State Office of IT • OIT disclaims responsibility for direct oversight of the project