Meet 'The Fixer' for Troubled IT Projects

CIO - Jason Coyne describes his unusual job in many ways: Marriage counselor. The Equalizer. Relationship guru. Project conscience. Resolution manager. The Fixer.

To those groups toiling away on your garden-variety technology implementation-the vendor, the customer, the integrator-Coyne's arrival on-site usually means one thing: A big tech project is in trouble. And Coyne's job as an objective third party is to either "kill or cure" those projects that have gone awry. (Coyne is sort of like a U.K. version of Winston Wolf, Harvey Keitel's industrious character from Pulp Fiction: "I'm Winston Wolf. I solve problems.")

"Project Fixer" Jason Coyne

Coyne, who's managing partner at the Evolution Project Consulting firm, claims to have worked on more than 500 different projects in the U.K. and abroad since the 1990s. "Not all disputes," Coyne adds, "but most of them have been." (Some companies have hired to come in at the beginning of a large project to prevent a disaster.)

Read the Enterprise Software Unplugged Blog and CIO.com's IT Project Management Blog

CIO.com Senior Editor spoke with Coyne about the ill-fated patterns and emotional traps that most tech implementation teams fall prey to, how he "sells" himself to his customers, and why companies often forget about a project's original goals during implementations.

CIO.com: How do you describe your job to someone at, say, a cocktail party?

Jason Coyne: I describe it as "marriage guidance for technology agreements." So just as different, diverse people come to together in a marriage, different and diverse organizations come together to form a project. And when there's fallout, they need somebody independent to help mediate and resolve the disputes.

There's no real rocket science in what I do. I just help people understand why they're in this relationship, this agreement. Usually, they just lose sight of what their goals are; in a marriage, people can lose site of that: What they're in the relationship for. I just really bring that back to the forefront of the attention, and they start focusing on the common goals.

CIO.com: Who typically hires you?

Coyne: Generally it's the purchasing party I'm instructed by; sometimes the technology vendor or systems integrator. But [my services can be hired] for anything to do with technology and a commercial dispute, if there's a contract and a legal agreement in place.

CIO.com: How did you get into this?

Coyne: I originally was an out-and-out techie. I started as a fourth-generation language programmer. I created business control software, accounting and manufacturing software back in the late 1980s. I didn't really enjoy programming, but I saw how things got created. And I actually implemented a number of these systems that I helped develop.

Reprinted with permission from

This story is reprinted from CIO.com, an online resource for information executives.
Story Copyright CXO Media Inc., 2009. All rights reserved.