Preventing Executive Shiny New Tool Syndrome Disaster - help on slowing down
We are a small/medium IT shop at a university--60 staff and 30 student staff.
We have over 2 years left on our 3-year contract with our ITSM tool. And we have almost a full year left on our PPM tool contract. Our executives recently got the idea we should implement JIRA for both our needs, this year (ITSM + PPM). This seems to be part of their long-term plan of being more agile and lean.
I manage the Project Management team, we implemented our current tool one year ago after doing a full product review, then we piloted for 6 months with a couple teams, then rolled it out to the rest of IT and are training the last team now. We specifically chose this tool because it's highly adaptable and we knew that our staff would be maturing our processes at a rapid pace over the next few years.
Last fall a team consisting of our ITSM sys admin, Service Desk Manager, Customer Service Manager, and myself led a product review looking at other ITSM products at executive request. We concluded our best course of action is to stick with our current tool, make some incremental improvements, and re-review in 6-12 months. Presented this to executives, it was accepted.
A month later one executive comes sweeping in with this idea that we are going to move everything to JIRA (this tool was not included in our review) and they are trying to fast-track this plan without a full product review. This executive has a ton of power and our project governance is currently basically a dictatorship.
From their angle, I said I embrace change, so why am I being stubborn about this?
From my angle, this sounds absurd. This seems to go against so many agile principles - individuals & interactions over processes and tools, implementing agile starting with mindset and values NOT tools and practices, building projects around motivated individuals, and that "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams" not from external and authoritative ideas.
How can I help them see the dangers of this rush and also detangle it from this "openness to change" argument?
I am open to change - when it is rooted in value, I have even been given feedback (last week!) from my direct reports that I help them see change as opportunity. All I see in this current situation with JIRA though is not actual change and improvement, but rather an exhausting surface level makeover that is going to only delay our REAL changes and improvements we need to make with PEOPLE and the way we are working.
Any articles, approaches, principles, case studies I could bring to them to SLOW them down and shift the focus?
A month later one executive comes sweeping in with this idea that we are going to move everything to JIRA (this tool was not included in our review) and they are trying to fast-track this plan without a full product review.
A few thoughts/questions come to mind:
- What are the potential risks if Jira does not go through a full product review? Assuming there are reasons for it, you should work to make the consequences of such fast-track decisions as visible as possible
- What are the benefits that this executive hopes to achieve through the use of Jira? It should be stressed that Agile has nothing to do with the tool being used. Work to educate others about what Agile truly is
- See if there is a way to quantify the amount of time and effort spent evaluating other ITSM products in the marketplace. A number of talented individuals conducted the evaluation and made their recommendation, so why does this one executive wish to throw that money/effort away in pursuit of their preference?
Read up on dealing with HIPOs (Highly Important Person's Opinion). I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs that seems fitting for your situation:
"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to to , We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."
Any articles, approaches, principles, case studies I could bring to them to SLOW them down and shift the focus?
- Can they articulate what success would look like as a result of the proposed initiative?
- How do they intend to measure success, and correlate it to a particular change being implemented?
- Have they researched and understood that the greatest part of organizational change is cultural? What is their strategy in this regard, and how do they intend to communicate it?
I feel for you. I have fought and lost this battle every single time. In my experience, the best facilitators and coaches could not help if the leader had their mind made up. The leader likely read about, saw or heard about the transformative power of the many team-management, collaborative and task-management applications. The leader thinks that tools=Scrum=Billion Dollars. The leader is more focused on team productivity and sunk cost than on the quality of the product and the happiness of the customer.
For profit or not-for-profit, somebody is in a position to make decisions. You, or an experienced facilitator or coach, should have a discussion with the leader, and if they don't budge, do the best you can. Don't be dogmatic or you could end up on the leader's naughty list.