Embrace breakdowns

Megaprojects won't succeed unless the IT staff embraces the breakdowns, says Tom Scott, executive vice president of operations and CIO at Direct Holdings Worldwide LLC in Virginia Beach, Va. "To believe there shouldn't be breakdowns [during a project] is like believing that Donald Trump will change his hairstyle," he says.

Scott just completed an overhaul of all IT applications for Direct Holdings' catalog retailer, Lillian Vernon, including those supporting order entry, customer service, warehouse management, financials, decision support and a new Web site. Each application was replaced with one or more best-of-breed applications.

IT staffs have to adopt a "glass half full" attitude, he says.

"[Breakdowns] will either be your sinkhole or your proverbial thousand points of light. They're like the gold in the project to identify where course corrections should be made, " Scott says. "Once people on project teams get focused on how to avoid looking bad, they begin to self-destruct. They start doing crazy things like 'How do we blame the vendor?' or 'How do we cover up issues to avoid losing our jobs?' "