Page 86 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

The IT Project Management lessons from throw away pants

It’s reassuring that even the planet’s biggest brands
mess up! When they do, their mistakes can become
global news and great lessons are there for all to see.

Now, In IT Project Management, mistakes rarely trouble
the headline writers. They can, and do, impact an
organisation’s bottom line though. And, it turns out,
there are lessons to be learned from the huge corporate
blunders that can help us in delivering our IT Projects.

My PM friend Malc is mentoring a group of young
project talent right now and has shared with me a
brilliant exercise that takes some of the biggest brand
mistakes and unpacks them with the eyes of a project
manager.

The lessons learned are really helping focus minds on how to avoid project fails – lessons that can be
learned without the pain of an actual IT Project disaster! I’m all in. It certainly trains you to look out
for the elephant in the room!
Here are just three examples that Malc shared, as you read, you’ll start to see the logic behind the
exercise and start to notice lessons everywhere too. I did, even watching Manchester United!

1 - New Coke

Coca-Cola unveiled New Coke in 1985. They’d tested their new recipe on 200,000 people and this
market research concluded that New Coke tasted better than their traditional version and rival
Pepsi.
It wasn’t well received. In a time before social media consumers were clear – they didn’t like the
change! There were protests, Coca-Cola fielded as many as 400,000 angry phone calls and letters as
Coke drinkers professed their dissatisfaction with the new product, people even bought New Coke
just so that they could pour it down the drain. Imagine if they had launched it in the Twitter era!!
In less than three months, New Coke was withdrawn and old Coke, rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic
was back on the shelves.

So, what lessons can IT Project Management learn from New Coke?

i) Stay alive to your central mission! Apparently, Coke’s mission wasn’t to launch a new recipe per
se, it was to re-energise the Cola market. You can argue that ‘New Coke’ did that! Often, in IT Project
Management we can get too caught up in the means and lose focus of the end. Analysing New Coke
as a launch of a new recipe, you have to chalk it up as a failure. However, when you consider the
bigger picture, the market was revitalised so was ‘New Coke’ a success!? (OK it cost $4m in
development and left them with $30m of New Coke they couldn’t shift – but still!)

ii) Ask the right questions. Coke had asked consumers which of their two products they preferred
and, based on the results, shelved 99 years of consistency and brand equity. Asking the same
consumers if there was anything wrong with the old Coke or did they want a change might have