10 things I hate about you –
The worst mistakes in GIS project history
(and how to avoid them)
The Top 10
10. Didn’t Have Enough IT Support
Today’s GIS world is a technical one. While modern GIS technology goes pretty
far to make the user experience easier, that doesn’t necessarily mean that
administering the data and applications is getting easier – quite the opposite. The
current state-of-the-art systems require DBA and other technical support to get
them up and keep them running in a major enterprise. There are utilities, and
probably other kinds of businesses, where the IT or MIS or IR department or
division or group thinks of GIS as ‘just mapping’. Usually, that means that IT
doesn’t allocate enough resources to help the system get off the ground and thrive
in an integrated environment, and problems are germinating. Databases are not
maintained, operating system or application software patches and upgrades can't be
applied, and before you know it, there are conflicts between the GIS and all the
‘enterprise’ systems (not to mention conflicts between most everyone in GIS and
IT).
That doesn’t mean that you need a huge team of IT experts, or that there aren’t
some pretty creative teams out there that are making their GIS work with business
users who have learned what they needed to know about RDBMS and applications
support. One way or another, somebody has to provide the care and nurture that
will keep your GIS working, and it won't be the elves. Enterprise GIS works best
when there is a balance between meeting IT standards and business needs, and
when it is enthusiastically supported by business users and IT technical resources.
Ok, maybe enthusiasm is too much to ask, but involvement right from the start, and
an on-going commitment from qualified technical resources, are vital to your
systems success.
9. Had too much IT support
At the risk of offending all the IT folk who are reading this, it can happen that the
need to meet all IT standards and procedures can become a major impediment to
delivering a successful enterprise GIS. If that seems counter-intuitive, remember
that it is a business system, after all, which means that it is supposed to be
delivering benefits for the business. Sometimes, the well-meant constraints
imposed by an IT group have made it difficult to get any GIS task done in a timely
enough way to meet the needs of the business.
Someone once said: “Enterprise GIS works best when there is a balance between
meeting IT standards and business needs, and when it is enthusiastically supported
by business users and IT technical resources.” Today’s utility business world can
be pretty demanding, and dynamic. In this context, balance may mean that IT has
to be flexible enough to serve the business first, without unduly compromising good
practice that will come back to bite everyone.
8. Failed ‘the Bus’ test
More often than one would suspect, we have seen a GIS implementation become
entirely dependent on a single technical resource. Usually, this person is a
combination of project manager/programmer/guru/spokesperson, and without this
sole source of all that is good, the GIS doesn’t stand a chance of success. That’s
what we mean when we say ‘the Bus test’, if that person gets run over by a bus, the
system is in big trouble.
Fortunately for us, most people who fit the profile of project
manager/programmer/guru/spokesperson are dedicated professionals who love their
technology, or at least like it better than they like most of their co-workers. Still,
we have seen the loss of just such a person, through illness or recruitment or bad
luck, result in catastrophic setbacks for a project so beware. Try to distribute
technical know-how and steer clear of single-point-of-failure, if you can. It is
always wise to avoid having all your eggheads in one basket.
7. Lacked a sponsor (at a high-enough level)
It isn't exactly a secret that no IT system ever had much of a chance of success
without some highly-placed person to steer it through the occasionally-rough waters
of implementation to maturity. The industry refers to her as a champion or a
sponsor, and she is not a nicety, but a requirement. The purpose of including that
factor here is not to get on the bandwagon (the author hardly thinks himself above
bandwagonism), but rather to point out that a champion or sponsor for GIS nearly
always exists. The problem is not that there isn't a sponsor, but that she doesn’t
have enough clout in the organization.
For a sponsor to be effective, she must possess through organizational role or
personal relationships enough juice to convince her management peers to stay the
course when things appear to bogging down, and to coach/encourage/coerce the
GIS team to stick to the important business problems and not go wandering off into
their own world. Please make note: the latter is just as important as the former.
Both must be done, and each enterprise GIS needs someone who can do them.
