Page 90 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Football’s Video Assistant Referee (VAR). Is it an IT Project that’s winning?

Thanks to VAR, Roberto Firmino's armpit and John
Lundstram's big toe have given football fans some of
this season’s hottest talking points. Who’d have thought
it!!?

I’ve been interested in the introduction of VAR (Video
Assistant Referee), football's video technology system
since it was introduced - on two levels. Firstly, as a
football fan and, secondly, as an IT Project professional
because, let’s face it, that’s what VAR is – an IT Project!

But has it been a successful one?

Speak to most football fans and they’ll tell you ‘no’ but
from an IT Project perspective? I’ll leave my answer on
that until the end of the post. There’ll be plenty of time as VAR will have added four minutes of
stoppage time by then!

What has been interesting is that many of the fans’ complaints are very similar to the causes of IT
Project failure, let’s take a look at some of them.

Scope Creep
VAR was supposed to give definitive answers to those grey areas that used to prompt debates in the
terraces, pubs and living rooms. I don’t EVER remember having a debate about whether someone’s
armpit was offside, yet this kind of thing is what is repeatedly being judged week in, week out by the
VAR officials.

VAR was also introduced to correct “clear and obvious” mistakes by the referee but how can
something be clear and obvious if it takes someone else, sat watching replays, three minutes to form
an opinion?

SCOPE is key to the success of any IT Project. Nail down the parameters of your project or lose
valuable time debating your business’ equivalent of an armpit offside – nobody wants that!!

End-User Training
VAR was meant to bring consistency to the game of football, am I alone in thinking it has done the
opposite? A handball given in one game is denied in another, a goal disallowed because of a foul in
the build-up in one match can be the winner in a game a week later. It seems that no-one is using
the tech consistently – so, of course, you get inconsistent results.

My friend is a project leader who transitioned a fabulous piece of software into service six months
ago, but which spent the first four months of its life the subject of one support ticket after another.
The software was working fine when staff went home but not when they logged back in to work the
next day. My friend was called back to investigate and concluded that the ‘issue’ was actually a
security and environmentally friendly feature. After two hours of inactivity, the software timed out
and became inactive, only coming back to life when the PC restarted. The problem was that staff
were signing out and not turning off their PCs so, effectively, a restart didn’t happen until the guys
on the support desk took control and initiated a reboot. Had the staff been trained to power down