Eric Sleeckx

The most common way a large IT investment fails is that the new system is added to the organisation rather than substituted into it. Nothing stops. The workload goes up, and the business case quietly stops being true. One question tests for it. Which report is no longer produced. Which reconciliation is no longer performed. … Read more

Adoption reporting typically measures completeness: what proportion of the work was recorded in the system. The more revealing measure is timing. When did the entry happen, relative to the event it describes? A system used correctly but always retrospectively is not carrying the work. It is functioning as a reporting layer over an unchanged process, … Read more

Somebody reports an adoption figure to your steering committee. Does anyone in the room know what its denominator is? Every adoption percentage carries one, and it is usually chosen by accident. Does the population include everyone with an account, everyone holding the role, or only those who received eligible work in the period? Are people … Read more

They are not dramatic. They are quiet, competent adaptations that leave every formal indicator intact. Which is why acceptance risk needs a third dimension beyond likelihood and impact. If this happens, how would the organisation find out, and when? A risk that announces itself is manageable almost regardless of its likelihood. A system nobody can … Read more

It contains no cause, no specific behaviour, no consequence and no group. It cannot be assessed for likelihood, cannot be assigned to anybody meaningfully, and cannot be closed except by assertion. A usable acceptance risk states three things. The cause: something identifiable about the design, the process, the environment or the distribution of burden. The … Read more

An implementation produces outcomes at four levels, and only one of them is normally contracted. The technical outcome: the system exists and functions within agreed parameters. The operational outcome: people can use it to perform their work, including the interruptions, exceptions and time pressure the process documentation left out. The behavioural outcome: they do. The … Read more

An implementation is delivered, the project closes, and the reports look acceptable. Two years later the benefit has not appeared and nobody can say exactly why. Part of the answer is that non-adoption is rarely refusal. It takes four recognisable forms, and only one of them is visible in a standard adoption report. Ceremonial use. … Read more

Most IT implementations that fail do not fail loudly. The software is delivered. The tests pass. The system goes live more or less on schedule, and the steering committee records a successful implementation and closes the project. Eighteen months later, the spreadsheet is back. The reports cannot be relied on. Somebody is proposing a project … Read more