The Project Triad
The Project Triad is made up of the three groups, present in every company, which must communicate and collaborate effectively in order to achieve success with enterprise software and software-related projects.
Senior Managers:
- Understand the direction, strategy, and goals of the organization
- Act as Executive Sponsors for projects and programs
- Set priorities and expectations for projects and initiatives
When Senior Managers aren't able to fulfill their responsibilities throughout the project lifecycle process, projects may not be properly aligned with organizational strategies or may not receive appropriate consideration and priority.
Business Professionals:
- Understand the detailed processes of the organization including, most critically, process exceptions
- Act as Subject Matter Experts in the gathering of requirements and documentation of specifications for projects
- Perform User Acceptance Testing and Product Validation ensuring that the delivered product performs as specified
When Business Professionals aren't able to fulfill their responsibilities for the project, it's likely that deliverables will be incomplete and of poor quality. Business Professionals must also be able to work closely with Technology Professionals to make sure requirements are understood and complete.
Technology Professionals:
- Produce deliverables (applications and systems) based on the specifications received from Business Professionals
- Provide expertise through their greater understanding of existing systems and infrastructure
- In collaboration with Business Professionals ensure that requirements are sufficiently detailed, understandable, and practical
When Technology Professionals aren't sufficiently engaged during definition and planning activities there is a higher risk for functional gaps and missed infrastructural requirements, leading to poor quality, future rework, or manual work-arounds.
Without the proper level of participation from each of the three groups of The Project Triad, the probability for project success is diminished.
When analyzing project failures the first step should be to verify that each of the three groups of the Triad was willing and able to fulfill their project roles and responsibilities effectively.
Neither Business nor IT can successfully execute projects without the other. (PPE Truth #47)