Thoughts on Project Success

I had a conversation recently with a friend and former colleague on the state of IT. A common theme was that for all the advances in technology, projects still fail at an alarming rate. This got me to think about two clients of mine. Both were large enterprise software companies and were both partners and competitors in given spaces. Both were deploying the same CRM product to increase efficiencies in their customer service centers. The situation was a perfect example of how to make a project a success and how to make a project fail.

The first company had ambitious plans to deploy across multiple product lines, across multiple service teams and integrate with multiple CRM systems. The plans were big and bold. “We will be your most successful and reference-able customer,” the executive sponsor boasted in the kickoff meeting.

The second company had calculated and negotiated their purchase price based on a cost per call metric. They had a simple goal. We have 18 months to get to positive ROI.

Which company succeeded?