Search Mountebanks
May 8, 2008
Author’s Note: This is an opinion piece, and it relates to the challenges that organizations face when trying to get the straight dope on an enterprise search, text mining, or any other complex enterprise software solution. If you are supremely confident of your knowledge, enjoy cutting corners, or perceive yourself as smarter than your customers when it comes to business–do not read this essay. Others may proceed at their own risk. I have masked the identify of the companies and individuals in the two “stories” so these folks can continue to pull skunks from their hats without their colleagues and customers seeing the reality behind the stage dressing.
Let’s look at this statement from a ZDNet Web log on May 7, 2008. The post is an interview conducted by Michael Krigsman, a good writer. The subject is US government information technology failures. Mr. Krigsman interviewed technical professionals working at CA (I think that’s the acronym for the “old” Computer Associates). One CA participant is Gil Digioia, a CA vice president, and the other is Jose (sic) Mora, a senior director. Both of these CA specialists are involved with “Federal Project Portfolio Management Sales for CA Clarity”. You can read more about CA Clarity here.) I’m not sure whom Mr. Krigsman is quoting in the segment below, but I thought these comments were remarkable:
There is room for execution improvement regarding the triple constraints of scope, time, and budget. The big reason is lack of “critical corrective action” from high-level decision makers within the organization. This can result from either lack of decision-making or leaders who don’t have the proper information to make decisions that ultimately impact the project.
Requirements also tend to change after projects have been awarded, and are often different at project conclusion from what was specified in the original proposal. These changes tend to disrupt project work flow and collaboration. Such challenges pose particular difficulties for organizations that don’t have a repeatable governance process in place or lack the proper technology to react easily to those changes.
Problems can arise at the project management level, the executive decision-making level, and with technology. For example, problems are sometimes caused by legacy systems that can’t adapt to the rapid changes in information these organizations face.
My interpretation of these statements is that Federal managers can’t manage. The folks involved in requirements don’t know what they need, so technical requirements are built on Jello. Legacy systems screw up the newer systems. What this says to me is: “The vendor is NOT at fault when project fail.”
Is this your IT or search consultant? Are you getting a skunk instead of a more tractable animal? Image source: http://cjonline.com/images/092906/41543_270.jpg
Powerful stuff. I relished how the interview subjects shifted the problems to the client. In fact, these comments have been made about enterprise search (what I call behind-the-firewall search or Intranet search). A search vendor groused to me at the Boston Search Engine Meeting that one of his largest clients doesn’t know what search is supposed to do. The client is the problem. When I pay to have my roof repaired, if the roof leaks, am I at fault. I expect the roofing guy to fix the roof. I guess my simple reasoning doesn’t apply to information technology projects.
What exactly is causing IT projects in general and enterprise search projects specifically to die from lack of oxygen? It’s easy to blame the customer. But the number of failures–pegged in the 65 percent range–suggests that we have to look beyond the person writing the checks. In fact, every organization has lousy managers. Most people (including me) working on requirements don’t know what they want until they get their hands on something tangible. Then–and only then–can a person say, “Yes, this is what I want.” And legacy systems are endemic. As the economy in the US rushes to beat the Great Depression for horrific consequences, legacy equipment is going to be around for some time.
In the last week, I had two interesting conversations. Two examples do not make a trend. But two recent calls did motivate me to write this essay. The interactions seemed to illuminate the problems of information technology project failures.
One contact was via a conference call (a problem for me because I can’t hear much since my heart “excitement” in February 2007) and by email (pretty good when the people writing take time to think about what they are doing. Not so good when the author can’t write a sentence).
I want to summarize each conversation–without mentioning names. I’m going to convert each to an anecdote, and then I want to step back and comment on what I learned from these two interactions and try to relate my learnings to the issues touched upon in Mr. Krigsman’s article. Okay, here we go.
Big East Coast Health Care Company
I get an email. It asks, “Would you like to speak at out company meeting?” I replied that I would for money. I submitted an outline of my basic 2008 text mining talk. (I prepare a couple of basic lectures each December and recycle them for these types of gigs.) We agree on a fee. Then I get an email asking for a conference call to discuss my outline. I say, “Sure”. On the conference call a smooth talking boss type says, “We think your outline is pretty close to what we want. Are you open to suggestions?” I reply that, within reason, I’m okay with making some changes to tailor the canned lecture. “Super,” he says. “We want you to drop the downside comments about our vendors. We want you to omit the conclusion that about 60 percent of search systems disappoint their users. And we want you to explain the financial pay off from text mining.
Manipulating health care data can invoke strong financial and personal penalties. Image source: FBI.gov
I told the very confident health care executive, “Count me out. I spent more than six months digging out the information in Beyond Search, and it is what it is. I’m not a person who takes money to parrot the party line. Thanks for calling.”
This was sufficiently embarrassing for the person who was unlucky enough to suggest me to the kick off speaker for a big corporate shin dig. I even received a phone call to my residence. The voice mail assured me that the big health care company really wanted an objective statement of what’s what with text mining.
I deleted the voice mail. Also, I threw out products from this outfit. If these folks twiddle research data in text mining, what the heck will these folks do with clinical trial data or quality assurance data for a consumer health care products?
Now case number two.
Big Consulting Company
I get an email from a secretary asking, “Will you brief our internal search team on enterprise search?” I write back and say, “Maybe.” I used to work at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and I know professionals at Big Consulting Companies know everything. (I used to think that too when I was younger and more stupid than I am now.) I get a couple of emails assuring me that everyone at the Big Consulting Company is really eager to hear me explain what works, what doesn’t, train wrecks, yadda yadda. But I am told, “Scheduling is hard.” (No kidding. 110 percent billability doesn’t leave much time for learning in my experience.) Then, out of the blue, I get an email from another person who works at the Big Consulting Company giving me information about a really lousy search system plus the names of the consultants involved in pushing the really lousy search system as the one to buy. Who are these guys?, I think. I tell my attorney to contact the Big Consulting Company and ask, “What’s going on? Mr. Arnold doesn’t want proprietary information about vendors. He doesn’t want to know the names and email addresses of the employees involved in buying the lousy search system.” I get an email saying, “We can’t schedule a meeting.”
Consultants take advantage of clients who assume their advisors know their stuff. The consultants at the Big Consulting Firm want to be perceived as really smart and bill those hours to hit their revenue target. Image source: loc.gov
Then I get an email saying, “Our schedules just don’t match, so disregard the emails.” Wow. No wonder Enron happened on when a Big Consulting Company was advising Enron’s great management team. Think pillage. Think carpet bagging.
Observations
If we look at the CA assessment of government managers, we see the vendor shifting responsibility for failure to the client. Okay, the Federal government is not the most efficient tool in the machine shop. But isn’t a vendor supposed to deliver results to a paying customer? I’m not to blame if the roof guy fixes the roof and it still leaks. Do the CA’s government contracts say, “We only help smart clients”?
In the handling of the internal briefing, I saw intent to hide important information about a class of enterprise software. I don’t think the person telling me to ignore my research findings. I think this is typical of managers who operate with little regard for data. I call this “management by entitlement”. The boss is entitled to make his reality the reality. In health care, that’s possibly dangerous and, in some circumstances, life threatening.
In the Big Consulting Firm query, we see disorganization and the consultants’ disregard of confidentiality. I was given employee information that, had I not deleted it immediately, I could have sold to a competitor or a headhunter without much effort. Not me. I had my attorney write these confident MBAs and tell them officially that I deleted their misdirected emails. If you were a client of the Big Consulting firm, would you want this type of information hosed around without your knoweldge?
Now some squawks from the goose pond::
- The types of problems with contractors, bosses, and employees are part of the landscape. Looking for short cuts and pointing fingers is not working. So, invest time and craft a solution that works. Cute MBA tricks don’t work too well when financial pressures shorten leashes.
- The complicated systems are now part of our landscape. These beasties won’t go away any time soon. Blaming a legacy system and hoping that a technical whitewash will resolve a problem is simplistic. In some engagement, such behavior is likely to trigger an investigation or worse. The fix is to define what’s acceptable and then stick to it.
- The consultants and vendors who want to baffle buyers with pixie dust are mountebanks. If mountebanks can’t figure out their schedules, how can these six figure wonders tackle the dependencies of an information retrieval system? Do the basics well. Get your act together. You don’t need an MBA from a fancy school to do a job well, thoroughly, and ethically.
There are some bright spots against which my week stands in sharp relief. One vendor called me to report a success with his firm”s new email product. Another informed me that his firm landed a Federal contract because his current project has been on time and on budget.
Now we have to create more successes like these two to be more wide spread. Vendors are paid to make lemonade from lemons, not point fingers, be disorganized, and take the client’s money and move on to greener pastures.
Stephen Arnold, May 9, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
