Why Government Technology Projects Fail eBook

WHY GOVERNMENT
TECHNOLOGY
PROJECTS FAIL
PEGA BUILD FOR CHANGE®
GOVERNMENT
ENABLING SUSTAINED SUCCESS

LEARN MORE
Government agencies have many large and complex
historical systems of record that must be coordinated to
achieve mission objectives, yet there are multiple studies
that demonstrate anywhere between 65 and 80 percent
of IT projects either fail, do not meet their stated objec-
tives, run significantly late or cost far more than planned.
Sometimes, they even become major news headlines.
In this e-book, Pegasystems’ Cathy Novak explores the
primary reasons large technology projects fail or do not
meet objectives, and offers an alternative approach that
will ensure sustained and successful results, delivered
on-time and within budget.
“Leadership is the courage to admit mistakes, the vision to welcome
change, the enthusiasm to motivate others, and the confidence to stay out
of step when everyone else is marching to the wrong tune.”
E.M. Estes

WHY GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY PROJECTS FAIL WWW.PEGA.COM
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Why Projects Fail
REASON #1: People
People are the primary reason technology projects fail. There are many ways in which
people issues can lead to project failure, such as lack of executive sponsorship, project
management or skills, resource constraints, and the simple fact that people are averse to
change and tend to hide behind federal regulations.
One of the most important aspects for project success is the team, yet most projects still
create strict divisions of labor between business people and IT. This inability to collaborate
frustrates people in both groups.
Government agencies also have unique people issues. A typical government project spans
multiple election cycles, and the stakeholders involved – and their corresponding priorities
– can and will change due to unplanned events, new legislation, retirements and other
outside political influences.
"We have found that our staff are walking rule
engines, because that is often the only place where
business practices and policies are defined."
John Supra, South Carolina Deputy Director & CIO, Health and Human Services in
Gartner’s Success Approaches to Business Process Management (July, 2013)

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Traditional methods of application development create requirement gaps. They focus
on data instead of how it needs to be used, go for the big bang, and do not provide the
flexibility to change quickly.
Conservatively, agency subject matter experts take six months or more to document all
of the requirements. IT must translate these into a working system – another six months
plus. By this time, you have the perfect storm:
� Business has undoubtedly missed some requirements.
� Lacking intimate knowledge of the business, IT has misinterpreted requirements.
� So much time has passed, important changes – new agency requirements, different
priorities, advancements in technology – are not reflected in the delivered solution.
It’s simply not possible to plan a multi-year project without expecting significant changes in
stakeholders, priorities and requirements.
Why Projects Fail
REASON #2: Requirement Gaps
“Scope creep should be mandatory. Without it, IT's
relevancy comes into question. With it comes the
adoption of any new deliverable.”
Information Week Global CIO, Coverlet Meshing

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Technology is not the primary reason projects fail. It’s the implementation of technology and the
lack of flexibility to make changes and integrate legacy systems that cause failure. A recent
IT initiative was turned off because users could not get the system to print addresses on
correspondence. It took over eight months and close to one million dollars to correct the issue!
Application development and implementation methods used in government today are
antiquated and produce manual, time-consuming processes. Multiple copies of the same code
base are used to satisfy minor, yet different requirements. The more agencies try to account
for all variables, the more complex integration becomes, allowing the potential points of failure
to grow exponentially.
Agencies need to be able to leverage their investments in existing technologies while creating
expanded and flexible functionality to support desired outcomes and satisfy changes driven by
new political priorities and constituent demands.
Why Projects Fail
REASON #3: It’s NOT the Technology

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Solution
TIP #1: Focus on Outcomes
Projects should never be about technology, but about producing successful and sustained
outcomes – facilitated by technology. To ensure successful outcomes while supporting
continuous change, the technology used must enable and serve as a bridge to:
� Connect people and process to structured and unstructured data.
� Promote collaboration between the business and IT.
� Allow for specialized processing and differentiated business rules.
� Provide insight into data and turn it into useful and active information.
� Unify the enterprise development environment, as well as enterprise applications to
ensure changes only need to be implemented once across all systems and channels
(social, mobile, call center, office).
DATA
INFORMATION
PROCESSES
PEOPLE

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Government activities are people-intensive, change often and typically require more than one
touch point. It’s never a point in time agencies are concerned with – it’s the activity over time
and the related information, in whatever form that information may take and wherever that
information may reside.
Technology must provide holistic case management with the ability to bring together all of
the people, processes, structured and unstructured data needed to resolve an issue. It also
requires case management that delivers dynamic processes which can be easily changed to
accommodate unexpected, ad hoc work and new policies and procedures.
Solution
TIP #2: Treat Everything as a Case with
a Process that will Change
Knowledge
Worker
Clerical
Worker
Extremely
Structured
SPECTRUM OF WORK
Collaborative
Unstructured
and Ad Hoc
System
Work Automation
Knowledge-
Assisted Worker
Case Subjects Collaboration
Tasks Events
Agency Objectives Rules and Policies
Processes &
Dependencies
Data
Related Information Content
Case
Management

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With continuous change, agencies need to define and quickly modify business processes. This
requires business and data rules that reflect agency policies and procedures.
Rules provide flexibility. Coping with change and variation is easy, as rules allow agencies to
create a process foundation and then add specialized layers of instructions that specify what
is different in specific situations. For example, a core benefit application process can include
rules for an online application vs. an in-person application. The same process can be used
across departments, systems and channels with rules accounting for required variations.
Rules need to be stored in a central repository so they can be reused. This makes managing
change far simpler: Any rule change will automatically update all impacted layers, which
means changes only have to be made once.
Solution
TIP #3: Differentiate and Specialize
by Specifying ONLY What is Different
ENTERPRISE-WIDE STANDARDS
PROCESS MANAGEMENT
ENTERPRISE-WIDE STANDARDS
MODES OF CUSTOMER INTERACTION (CHANNELS)
GOVERNMENT CUSTOMER
BUSINESS
CUSTOMER
CUSTOMER
TYPE 1
PROGRAM 1
CUSTOMER
TYPE 2
PROGRAM 2 PROGRAM 3
JURISDICTION REGULATIONS
FEDERAL REGULATIONS

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Receiving, routing and reporting on cases is considered the core of agency workflow and
represents the agency’s procedures. But these steps are only half of the total process.
Agencies don’t function based only on their procedures – they also run based on the policies
that affect how they research, respond and resolve each case.
This requires technology that enables agencies to unify procedures and policies so that they
can automate as much as possible. When intelligent processes can manage the entire
spectrum of policies and procedures related to a case in real time, agencies can maximize
the use of automation to increase efficiency, compliance and transparency.
Solution
TIP #4: Actively Manage Your Information
Anticipatory Retrieval
Adaptive Analytics
Open Database
Productivity &
Quality Alerts
Model &
Simulate
Priority
Cases &
Folders
Skill Based
Routing Tailored
Interactions
Next Best Action
Multi-Channel
Imaging
Web Services
Telephony
System-Driven
Processing
Guided Processing
Automated
Transactions

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Every day, agencies struggle to maintain and enhance siloed systems. And every day,
they are bombarded with complicated data that ends up in different silos. Unfortunately,
the people who can best manage this legacy environment are retiring, and their domain
expertise is walking out the door. With current budget constraints, agencies must find more
effective ways to leverage current technology investments.
The solution is a unified environment that not only simplifies application development,
but also overcomes legacy silos. A unified environment orchestrates interactions between
existing systems, gathering and using the data required to complete a process regardless
of where the information resides, while delivering a complete picture of information related
to a constituent. The unified environment enables transparency on an enterprise scale by
supporting the widest possible array of integration and connectivity standards that leverage
existing systems in streamlined processes.
Solution
TIP #5: Unify Your Enterprise
0
AGENCY MISSION
TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE (ESB/SOA)
SOCIAL
AND
MOBILE
@
+
Code-free integration to standard transports
Auto consumption/publication
“When Needed” data retrieval
UNIFIED ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS
LEGACY
ERP
SERVICES
DATA
CONTENT
ENTERPRISE
APPLICATIONS
Case
Management
Process
Management
Decisioning
Monitoring
Analyzing
Continuous
Improvement

The common thread among all of the reasons for failed technology projects is that they take
too long to complete and cannot effectively respond to the rapid pace of change agencies
face. The trick is to build for change from the beginning – expect change, plan for change,
welcome change, and use technology that supports business/IT collaboration, continuous
change and the ability to specialize.
This requires a model-driven approach that allows business users and IT to partner in the
transformation process. Tools that let business analysts directly capture agency policy
into working application models; a reusable repository of assets that lets IT quickly build
components such as security and data integration rules; and automatic generation of the
application’s structure, documentation and code.
Solution
TIP #6: Time Should NOT be Your Enemy
Agency Mission/
IT Requirements
Capture Policies and
Processes Directly
in Application
Automatically
Elaborate, Build
& Document
Zero Coding
Rapid Development
& Deployment
Quick Response
to Change
MODEL-DRIVEN PROCESS

Pega Build for Change®
Government can help government agencies transform their
operations. With this foundation, agencies can deploy highly automated applications that
precisely meet their needs in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional development
methods or commercial solutions that demand extensive configuration.
Pega unifies processes and rules in real time to account for new regulations, policy changes
and specialized circumstances. Holistic case management eliminates manual workarounds
by orchestrating the sharing and use of data maintained in legacy systems. Pega’s business-
focused application development uses natural language and familiar tools to rapidly model
and deploy processes which are easily reused to support implementations across programs,
agencies and channels. With Pega, agencies can:
� Think big, yet start small and focus on outcomes.
� Build effective collaboration between business and IT.
� Unify enterprise development environment and enterprise applications.
� Transform in phases with continuous improvement.
How We Can Help:
Pega Build for Change®
Government
YEARR
YEAR
YEAR 1
JUNE
JANUARY MARCH
YEARS
Traditional Timeline
MONTHS
Pega System
Modernization
WEEKS
Pega Legislative
Changes
DAYS
Pega New Policy

© Copyright 2013 Pegasystems Inc. All rights reserved.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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About Pegasystems
Pegasystems, the leader in business process management and
software for customer centricity, helps organizations enhance
customer loyalty, generate new business, and improve productivity.
Our patented Build for Change®
technology speeds the delivery of
critical business solutions by directly capturing business objectives
and eliminating manual programming. Pegasystems enables
clients to quickly adapt to changing business conditions in order to
outperform the competition.
For more information, please visit us at www.pega.com.

Why Government Technology Projects Fail eBook

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Why Government Technology Projects Fail eBook