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Four Tips for IT Managers: Go Lateral with IT Projects, Not Top Down

Dennis McCafferty | Date: 11-09-10 | Comments

The more you plan and communicate a project's worth in advance, the better the results, according to authors of a recent book on project management.

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Four Tips for IT Managers: Go Lateral with IT Projects, Not Top Down

At a prior organization where I worked, IT managers and their teams generally operated in a "We'll supply it/you'll use it" capacity, aka a "top down" approach. Whether it was a new version of a writing/editing/designing program, a communications system or our organization's online assets, there simply wasn't much exchange between those who provided the end result and those who had to use it.

Case in point: One day, we were told that we had a new e-mail spam filter, and that the spam filter had actually already been installed and operating for two weeks. This came as a surprise to us, since the IT department never mentioned anything up until then. We were walked through the access procedures and then discovered that the new "improved" spam filter actually contained about three-fourth spam and one-fourth "mission-critical" valid e-mails that remained unanswered for that two-week period. Accessing the filter was also a tedious, multilayered process.

The resulting reaction was predictable: initial anger over the lack of communications about the tool's launch and the missed e-mails; a continued inability for the new filter to distinguish legit e-mail from spam; a failure to explain why a system that required a multilayered access process was an "improvement" over self-filtering of spam that didn't require any such steps. Eventually, the IT team allowed for us to opt out if we wanted to. So co-workers and I did just that.

Project fail.

Given the wealth of these and similar experiences within organizations, the book "Lateral Approach to Managing Projects" (Lateral Approach Publishing) provides essential guidance to help managers avoid these outcomes. "Lateral" here essentially translates to integration. No, not the "IT" translation of integration. But the integrating of communications and leadership qualities on the part of managers throughout the organization from the project's beginning to well after its completion.

Authors H.W. Sit and Ling Bundgaard weave hypothetical scenarios with concrete, clear action steps to provide needed insight. Sit is the chief strategy officer of Accela, a government-software company. Bungaard is a longtime Intel corporate executive who is now an international business consultant.

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