Is the vendor solely responsible for WCM project failure?

Janus Boye is hosting the J Boye Aarhus '09 Conference this week in in Aarhus, Denmark. Boye wrote a post on his blog ahead of a session he is hosting on web content management called Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges. The blog post covers a lot of ground, but one line jumped out at me:

Perhaps customers should explore ways of tying payments to actual project success?

This was not the gist of the post by any means, just an idea Boye was throwing out there, but it got me thinking about just who is responsible for the success of web content management projects, and is it fair to the vendor to tie payment to actual success when many times projects get tied up internally due to factors well beyond the vendor's control? I asked Michael Krigsman, who writes the IT Project Failures blog on ZDNet, who was ultimately responsible for the failure of the project.

The customer is always right?

Krigsman suggests that in the world of commerce that the customer is usually right when issues arise and it's up to the vendor to fix them. "An old truism says, 'the customer is king' and nowhere is that more true than implementing enterprise software." But he adds that it doesn't mean that the customer doesn't have a significant role in a project's success.

"It's easy and tempting to blame the software vendor or system integrator when projects run late, over budget, or do not achieve planned results. Human nature suggests that blaming an external party is always easier than examining our own role in the failure situation. In my experience, however, many projects fail because groups inside the customer organization have different goals and measures of success," Krigsman says.

Put it in writing

One way to minimize the likelihood of project failure, whether we are talking about WCM or anything else, is a well-written contract with clear expectations and milestones where payments are tied to these milestones. Of course, the vendor is going to put in caveats that put some responsibility on the customer to provide the environment to meet those milestones, so in that sense it's a two-way street (and Krigsman adds a third component in large software installations: The system integrator).

"The Devil's Triangle of failure consists of the enterprise buyer, software vendor, and system integrator. Contracts that align external vendor payments to milestones and specific measures of customer success can help reduce waste and keep vendors efficient," Krigsman says.

What's the best course?

Ultimately, the blame game doesn't serve anyone or get you to the end goal of a successful project. Like any large enterprise project, you have to know your needs and express these to the vendor. "The best content management projects address specific business goals, with defined outcomes and concrete expectations about results. Projects without concrete expectations and measure of success are far more likely to fail than ones where these are defined carefully in advance," Krigsman says.

So in the end, you could tie your payment to project success, but as Krigsman says, you better have your ducks in a row and your goals clearly stated, because if you don't, you'll have nobody but yourself to blame. - Ron

Please Note: On Nov 16th, we will be publishing an interview with Andrew McAfee, who is credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0. Watch for it!