10 things I hate about you –
The worst mistakes in GIS project history
(and how to avoid them)
Jeff Meyers
Miner & Miner
4701 Royal Vista Circle
Fort Collins, CO 80529
Abstract
Despite the fact that few GIS implementations are declared out right failures, most
projects are not as successful as they might be. Nearly all projects, when subjected to
disinterested analysis, would reveal things that might have been done better. Are there
some common threads among the issues that surface? The author’s experiences show
that there is indeed a top ten list of sins that have plagued spatial deployment and
integration projects. The focus of this paper will be the real-life experiences (minus the
utility names) that have been, in the author’s humble opinion, some of the worst ever.
Along with the obvious, the attendee will hear a few surprises, and be presented with a
summary of the things that any manager, project team, or implementer can do to avoid
these common mistakes, and deliver their GIS implementation in a reasonable amount of
time and for a realistic amount of money.
Introduction: On why it ought to be easier, but isn't
It has often seemed to the author, and no doubt to others, that designing, building, and
deploying an enterprise GIS ought to be less difficult. Let’s face it: GIS projects have a
pretty lousy track record for delivering the promised business benefits within a
reasonable time frame and budget. Why is that, we wonder? Shouldn’t it be easier?
At first glance, and for a long time after that, it just seems to make sense that you could
follow a recipe for success. You know, kind of a one-size-fits-all, can't-miss sort of
approach. Maybe we just need to sit down and think about it for a bit. Of course, once
we do that, we can only conclude that there isn't a secret fix. Books have been written
(including one by yours truly) about this stuff. These learned volumes give the
guidelines on all kinds of things, and some of them are even helpful. When starting a
new phase of your project, you should obtain and read all the reference material you can
stand (did I mention that I wrote a book?). Nevertheless, the truth is that there are so
many variables in the equation that it is just about impossible to concoct an approach that
won't need to be adjusted to your local conditions to work well.
So, even if there isn't a guaranteed single technique for success, there certainly is a list of
things that ought to be avoided, if we want to have a chance. Goodness knows that there
have been enough mistakes made in this business to get going a pretty good catalog of
things that may have gone wrong. The following are ten characteristics of utility GIS
projects or their participants that had an impact on their success. Call it the Top 10 List
of Infamy, in reverse order of commonality, or severity:
10. Didn’t have enough IT support
9. Had too much IT support
8. Failed ‘the Bus’ test
7. Lacked a sponsor (at a high-enough level)
6. Had a poor project manager
5. Had a poor methodology, or none
4. Had unrealistic schedule expectations
3. Didn’t plan for technology change
2. Didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t take internal ownership
1. Had unrealistic scope expectations
You can probably think of other mistakes, and maybe you've even made some. However,
the list up above represents the most common, and in some ways, the most serious
obstacles to delivering business benefit, in the author’s experience, and if it doesn’t sound
too self-serving, the author has had a fair bit of experience in the mistake department.
Here then, is a paragraph or two of some of the awful things that can and do happen to
GIS projects everyday.
