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Top 10 Challenges-Faced by CIOs in-IT Projects' Implementations

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PCQ Bureau
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1. Change management



Teaching something new to a fresh mind is often easier than teaching to a

trained one. That's one of the key challenges of change management. So if a

company employee is already used to working in a particular way, teaching him to

change and follow a different way by using IT is tough. Scale up this situation

to a large enterprise with thousands of employees spread across the country, and

you have a gigantic problem at hand.

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2. Getting funds from the management



This is a universal problem that will emerge every time you need to roll out

a major IT project, even if you have your annual IT budgets sanctioned.

Ultimately, every project needs a business justification.

3. Handling attrition



What if a key person who was handling a very important part of your IT

project leaves for greener pastures? Do you have a backup or will your project

be in a soup?

4. Interoperability



Any large IT project is likely to use different types of software and

hardware. Chances are that the new solution would have to be integrated with

some of the existing ones. Ensuring that it integrates seamlessly and operates

well with the existing system(s) can be tough. Moreover, since the new system

will have software, solutions, and services from different vendors, you're

likely to face another interoperability issue there-that of ensuring that many

vendors work together seamlessly!

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5. Identifying processes for automation



This is easier said than done. Every organization has hundreds of processes

for everything and in every department. Judging which process to automate and in

what sequence is not easy. In fact, one of the insights we have gained is that

automating a wrong process can be detrimental for an IT project, leading to cost

overruns.

6. Keeping costs under control



It's the bane of all project managers. No matter what the funds you have

been sanctioned for your new IT project, it's likely to exceed that. The project

head has to ensure that it doesn't overshoot too much. How much is 'too much' is

another tough question because there's a fine line between keeping costs under

control and skimping on the spending.

7. Project plan justification



Every IT project is going to deliver business or social benefits, but the

question is when? If it's immediately, then there's nothing to worry about. But

if it's going to be some time in the future (which it most probably will be),

then a well structured project plan is a must. Keep all those details about what

will happen at each stage ready, because you have to justify why it's going to

take so long to show results.

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8. Scaling up-working in a limited space



A typical problem that enterprises are facing today is of adding more

equipment in their already over-populated data centers. The need for IT is

growing faster than the amount of equipment that the data center can handle. So

every time a new IT project comes, then one of the first things that the CIO or

project head has to worry about is making space in the data center for the

equipment that would be used for the new project.

9. Scaling down-consolidation



This is actually a solution to the previous challenge of scaling up, but

it's a challenge in itself. If you already have a large data center with

hundreds of servers for instance, then migrating them into a fewer, more

powerful servers is no mean feat.

10. Training a Geographically dispersed team



Ultimately, as you automate your branch offices, you'll need people there to

manage it. Training them for the same is not easy, and the problem intensifies

with more braches.

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