In my previous post, called Perfect Project, I reviewed how the use of the decision framework can help the stakeholder group make informed decisions on their way to a successful project implementation.

In this post, we’ll look at a project that had a remote sponsor, uninvolved targets, some opportunistic hangers-on and a new project manager. Fortunately, the PM persisted with some critical yet fundamental practices, sometimes in the face of fierce executive resistance, to achieve success. That’s why I call this post Speaking Truth to Power!

The Situation

This organization was a large international financial services firm with world-wide operations. Because it was listed on a US stock exchange, it was required to comply with the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The bill was enacted in the US in 2002 as a reaction to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, WorldCom and others.

The Goal

The legislation not only affected the financial side of corporations, it also affected the IT departments whose job it is to store a corporation's electronic records. SOX required all business records, including electronic records and electronic messages, to be saved for "not less than five years." The consequences for non-compliance were fines, imprisonment, or both. IT departments were increasingly faced with the challenge of creating and maintaining a corporate records archive in a cost-effective fashion that satisfied the requirements put forth by the legislation.

The Project

The organization launched a SOX program that included nine separate projects to address all lines of business and corporate functions. The PM running the Individual line of business SOX initiative departed nine months before the targeted and required completion date and so the company hired a contract PM to pick up the reins and see the project through to completion. All of the nine projects reported a Green status – everything going according to plan – from the inception of the program.

The Results

Before even starting on the job, the contract PM hired to run the Individual line of business SOX project read everything he could about SOX, the motivation, the risks, the penalties for non-compliance and what other companies were doing to address the challenge. On assuming his role as PM and with only 9 months remaining, he talked to the project’s stakeholders and project staff and discovered the following:

  • The stakeholders and project staff had little or no knowledge of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its implications for the organization.
  • Managers were including their own personal agendas and pet projects under the umbrella of the SOX initiative, swelling the effort, costs and risk.
  • There was no believable plan in place, no risk plan, incomplete testing and acceptance plans and inadequate resourcing. In short, there was absolutely no justification for a Green status.
  • To compound the challenge, the program sponsor, the corporate CFO, was not available to PM’s. They were required to report through their respective line of business CIO’s.