Over the Transom: Dealing With 'Just-this-once, ple-e-e-ase!' IT Project Requests

Special requests and just-this-once favors can turn your project planning into a free-for-all.

By Judy Artunian

November 28, 2005 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Mary Finlay remembers well the hectic days when her IT department was all but buried by special projects for internal customers. Business people would stop IT managers in the halls asking for favors like a system enhancement or a new module for an existing application. At one point, Finlay and her colleagues counted the number of ways in which the requests would come in. "We stopped at 100," says Finlay, deputy CIO at Partners HealthCare System Inc. in Boston. "You can literally get into a situation where you're using most of your resources responding to those kinds of requests."


Mary Finlay, deputy CIO at Partners HealthCare System Inc. Image Credit: Webb Chappell

The department didn't have a tool to track the projects that came in over the transom, so it didn't know how many were under way. Without a clear picture of the number of tasks on the docket, IT managers couldn't be sure how the extra workload was affecting scheduled work. "What happened was that one day at a time, projects would get delayed," says Finlay. "We were marginalizing resources by spreading them across the special requests plus the major initiatives."
That was four years ago. Partners HealthCare has since implemented a system for approving nonscheduled work that requires the business units to take more responsibility for prioritizing their off-plan projects.
Off-plan projects aren't new in the corporate IT environment, but the urgency of requests for them may be growing. "The speed of business today requires more responsiveness than, say, 15 years ago. There is probably a better case for an internal customer to say, 'I really need this now,' " says Kent Fourman, vice president of IT at Knoxville, Tenn.-based Housecall Medical Resources Inc.
With many CIOs reluctant to reveal how their departments handle what have sardonically been called "friends and family" requests, it is difficult to estimate how often the typical IT department is asked to sneak in a side project and how many of these requests are granted.
Some IT executives note that project-prioritization committees aren't always effective in dealing with informal appeals for projects. Finlay says that during the years when her department was awash in special requests, the department had a prioritization system, "but it only looked at where the major activity of system work occurs."
At some organizations, it's routine to bypass prioritization committees for certain requests. "Working outside the box is legitimate for most firms," says Bobby Cameron, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. "If you have a very fixed-budget, zero-sum-game IT

Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Additional Resources

Xerox

Win a color printer!

By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!

Microsoft

Upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 today.

Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.

Sybase

NEXT-GENERATION MOBILITY PLATFORMS

In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Business Process Management: Leveraging Competencies and Streamlining Processes to Achieve Operational Excellence
(Source: IBM) BPM is a business management practice that encompasses process automation, process modeling and simulation, process modularization and service orientation, process monitoring,...

BPM ROI calculator
(Souce: IBM) Content-rich processes, from opening a new account to customer billing, are central to day-to-day operations. These processes, however, tend to be...

Your Solution for Delivering and Optimizing Applications Across the Enterprise
Learn why a large US food processor chose Citrix NetScaler to securely deliver a new Oracle ERP solution to external partners and remote...

BPM Survey Results: The Real-World Analysis
(Source: IBM) Business Process Management (BPM)enables faster, more confident decision making, which results in more transactions conducted, which ultimately leads to more satisfied...

Application Delivery Solutions
Learn why a $6.5 billion international producer and marketer of alcoholic beverages chose Citrix NetScaler to increase Web app performance and ensure high...

Usability Is Everything
Learn what sets Workday's HR and Payroll solutions apart from the competition....

8 Must-Have Features to Handle All of Your Network Demands
The functionality you need in your next load balancer. Learn how you can replace your aging load balancer with a true web application...

The Value of Real SaaS at Workday
Cost savings, speed to value, and innovation brought to the enterprise by Workday's software-as-a-service solutions for HR and Payroll....

Accelerate SSL Encrypted Applications
The amount of SSL traffic is growing in the enterprise. Because it is encrypted, it cannot be properly controlled and accelerated. Blue Coat...

SaaS at Flextronics, Inc.
Dave Smoley, CIO of Flextronics, discusses the real value of software-as-a-service and why he chose Workday for his HR solution....

All White Papers | All Webcasts