12 Risks for Enterprise Software Projects

Every large IT project is unique. Each faces a complex array of challenges. When projects get into trouble, they often exhibit similar patterns - succumbing to risks that could have been anticipated, prevented, detected sooner, or managed better. Common early responses to problems - blaming, deferring action, or outright denial - usually make things worse.

In this session, Payson Hall reviews a dozen patterns he has observed on large, troubled IT projects during his forty-year career, including troubles with subcontractors; challenges with project sponsors; friction within the team; the perils of interfacing with adjacent systems; and issues with data cleansing and conversion.

The session shares insights to help identify the symptoms of common risks, reduce the likelihood of risks occurring, facilitate early detection of problems, and establish a foundation for helpful responses when problems arise.

This session is designed for project managers, team leaders, project sponsors, and others with responsibility for successfully building and rolling out large enterprise systems.

Why you should Attend

If your multi-million-dollar enterprise software project is going to fail, we suggest you find novel reasons for that failure and avoid failing for common reasons.

Presenter Payson Hall has managed software projects, conducted project audits, performed project reviews, and conducted project autopsies during his 40-year career. During this time, he has observed some common causes of project failure that he will share to raise awareness among participants of the risks and possible ways to mitigate them.

Areas Covered in the Session

A quick risk management tutorial
Tips for framing risks to make them actionable
Review each of the 12 risks
- Discuss examples
- Explore possible remedies
- Discuss with participants
Q&A

Who Will Benefit

This session is particularly focused on project managers, senior project team members, portfolio managers, project office teams, and project sponsors who are responsible for enterprise level systems. It is most useful to those who implement:

Large systems that interact with other production systems
Systems that replace existing systems
Production system (migrations) to new environments
(Bonus): Public Sector systems

Speaker Profile

Payson Hall is a former U.S. Army Ranger and consulting project manager for Catalysis Group, Inc. in Sacramento. Formally trained as a software engineer, Payson’s early career included software development, hardware/software system integration, and Independent Verification & Validation. As his career progressed, his role shifted to include increasing project management responsibilities, with a focus on technology projects.

Today Payson coaches project managers, teaches project management skills, consults, and performs project reviews in a variety of fields, including transportation, communication, software development, education, financial services, and healthcare.

Payson has consulted on projects in both the public and private sectors throughout North America and Europe during his 40-year career. He has published over 250 project management articles, developed numerous project management and problem-solving classes, written a book on project sponsorship, and is a sought-after conference speaker who specializes in demystifying project management topics and communicating important ideas while entertaining audiences.