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.
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!
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.
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.