ITP Techblog

Failure rates for tech projects seem doomed to continually rise as large-scale IT rollouts in particular become ever more complex.

A recent KPMG survey found that only 33% of projects meet their initial goals, less than one third are delivered on budget and only ten percent are effectively governed.

From the Inland Revenue department's new multi-billion dollar system right down to a simple migration from one provider to another, project management is essential in ensuring a smooth transition from one state to the other.

Local company Designertech believes it has the solution - a project management system that takes the effort out of managing large-scale projects by informing the whole team every step of the way through the project's run - and it launched it at this year's ITx 2018 conference.

Designertech had the perfect test bed - itself. Having struggled to bring in projects on time and on budget, the team decided to build their own solution and as a Gold Microsoft partner, Designertech has the tools for the job.

"We boiled it down to some fairly basic needs. Accurate planning, forecasting and tracking were essential because with better visibility comes better project management," says CEO Ray Delany.

By combining software tools with the company's own project management experience, Designertech built a solution that the team quickly realized would be a good addition to its product set.

Today, the product is known as ClaroPMO and will be launched at this year's ITx conference in Wellington.

"We identified the four key client needs - trust, visibility, foresight and guidance, and by building ClaroPMO with those goals in mind, we believe we've built a solution that will help clients address issues with project management."

The thing that sets ClaroPMO apart is that it is predictive. Traditional project management falls down due its reactive nature of reporting, whereas ClaroPMO contains a customised set of performance indicators that empowers stakeholders and project managers with the information they need to change project outcomes. 

"If you are just one week into a project and something isn't completed on time that's usually seen as not a big deal, but with the dashboard we can extrapolate out to tell you what that slippage will actually mean in terms of final outcomes at the end of the project. This gives users the knowledge they need to correct problems at the start, rather than the end of a project."

For Designertech the results speak for themselves.

"Since January 2017 we've seen our cost overruns improve by 75%. Our projects are better managed and delivered under budget and that's very pleasing to see," says Ray.