———————————————————————————————————-
Independent verification and validation (IV&V) – the process of ensuring that a system fulfills all specifications and its intended purpose – is critical to the earliest stages of the development process and essential to minimizing an IT project’s exposure to failure. Many CIOs see the cost of IV&V as a great investment to minimize risks in large and complex projects such as supply-chain software upgrades, building/moving a data center or doing a major system modernization.
———————————————————————————————————-
Recent discussions with numerous CIOs reveal that identifying and mitigating project risks are critical steps, especially when cost overruns are no longer tolerated. Cost over-runs and outright project failures represent millions of lost investment dollars and opportunity costs that are incurred far too often. Businesses can no longer afford failed projects.
CEOs receive a range of staff responses when they ask, “Why is the project failing?”
• The selected technology did not work as expected and is complicated.
• User requirements and expectations were not managed well or clearly defined.
• Resources were not managed to achieve the desired business value.
• Too many project changes resulted in an overly complex system that was hard to test.
• We have vendor delivery problems; or, we had internal management challenges.
Two CIOs recently stated that during cost cutting, “We eliminated several high-risk projects and implemented an IV&V process to ensure that the remaining projects were managed better and would deliver the needed value.”
A common theme of identifying problems earlier and using an IV&V process helped several organizations modify project plans or stop projects due to technical or managerial issues. According to one state CIO, “We previously viewed IV&V as a luxury, but the cost is such a small percentage of the project budget and it helps ensure the delivery of projected business value. The result is that we’re now mandating it on many of our large and high-risk projects.”
A government CIO stated: ”We have since implemented an IV&V process on our major projects in the planning and development phases. We will not undertake another large-scale project without an IV&V process.”
The CIO of a Fortune 100 company stated that the enterprise is much better off using an IV&V contractor and process because they “identified several major technical problems the prime contractor did not recognize.”
A healthcare CIO stated that the IV&V process helped deliver a $20 million patient administration and records project on time in a situation where there was no room for overruns or mistakes.
CIO CALL TO ACTION
The following best practices will help ensure that both business leaders and the IT organization reap strategic value from IV&V:
• Find a reputable, independent and experienced third party; internal resources are not independent.
• Determine the scope of responsibilities for the IV&V contractor that best fits the project.
• Develop an IV&V management plan that is approved by business executives.
• Ensure that IV&V addresses both managerial and technical approaches, requirements and ability to deliver the business value as stated in the project charter.
• Do not treat IV&V as an overhead expense; it is a critical risk management component of the project cost. If the business does not want to pay for IV&V, it must accept the additional risk and conduct more periodic technical and management reviews.
• Recognize the complexity of a project and ensure that the IV&V process provides actionable information for timely decision making.
• Ensure that the appropriate roles, responsibilities, authority and reporting lines are clear, and develop a set of comprehensive, business-oriented IV&V performance metrics.
BOTTOM LINE
By implementing upfront planning and ongoing due diligence, IV&V is an excellent process to ensure better project oversight and to reduce project cost and schedule over-runs. A secondary and often overlooked benefit is reduced post-implementation support, which can save considerable longer-term costs.
Business Impact:
IT project failures and projects that produce suboptimum results will increasingly be less tolerated by the business. Organizations can no longer afford the additional costs or the potential loss of promised agility or growth when projects do not achieve the business case for which funding was approved.
Additional Insights:
1. “Driving Quality Upstream by Using Unit Testing” (Research)
2. “Lack of Goals and Specifications Dooms FBI’s Virtual Case File Management System” (Research)
3. “Case Study: Grants.gov Is a Step Toward Streamlining Grants in the U.S. Federal Government” (Research)
4. “Market Overview of Application Testing-Service Providers” (Research)
5. “Testing Services: Guidelines for Understanding and Using Testing Service Key Terms and Definitions” (Research)
Please e-mail the authors with your comments and suggestions. We also invite you to participate in a case study.
Amos Auringer: amos.auringer@gartner.com
Jonathan Settle: jonathan.settle@gartner.com
