Achieving Successful Program Execution: A Research-Based Approach
July 8, 2021
Hosted by William Ulrich
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Episode Description
Why do projects fail, or fall well short of their original goals? That is the topic that this episode of The North Star will explore. Jim Johnson, researcher, author, inventor, and Standish Group Chair, will join William Ulrich to share what he has learned over the past three decades on this topic. Jim is the author and researcher behind the widely quoted Chaos Report. He will share his insights into the report’s findings based on 25 years of data into failed, challenged, and successful projects, discussing why some projects fail, where others succeed. The Chaos Report has consistently shown that roughly only one third of projects have historically been successful. Jim will also discuss the concept of decision latency and its effect on project performance. In addition to latency, Jim will discuss team maturity, scoping challenges, user involvement, complexity, and a host of other project performance factors. He will also share what he sees as a way to shift historically poor project performance to more positive trends based on his latest work, which involves implementing software without using project management. Join the discussion as Bill and Jim explore the project deployment challenges that have plagued so many organizations around the globe over the past three decades.
The North Star
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The North Star takes a deep dive into the topic of strategy execution, often challenging conventional wisdom for achieving an organization’s strategic vision. The host and thought leaders from multiple fields explore concepts that include rethinking innovation, increasing enterprise agility, transitioning to the circular economy, managing enterprise risk and becoming a cognitive enterprise. Setting sights on one’s “north star” is only half the story. Decades of experience point to the headwinds organizations have faced in pursuit of their strategic vision. To that end, the North Star examines how organizations can more effectively deliver on critical business strategies in these uncertain times. The show tackles intractable challenges that many organizations have historically sidestepped, such as optimizing major program investments and untangling high risk technology deployments. While the show often points toward the road less traveled, that road that can make all the difference.
William Ulrich
William Ulrich is President of Tactical Strategy Group, Inc., Cofounder of Business Architecture Associates, President and Cofounder of the Business Architecture Guild and Cutter Consortium Fellow. As a management consultant for more than 40 years, Mr. Ulrich continues to serve as advisor, mentor and workshop leader to corporations and governments worldwide. He is a thought leader in strategy execution, business transformation, business architecture and transformation oversight. Mr. Ulrich has the unique ability to engage executives and practitioners across business and IT boundaries to facilitate and streamline ecosystem-wide transformation. His transformation workshops and lectures have been widely attended by organizations worldwide. Mr. Ulrich blends his IT transformation expertise with his extensive business architecture and business transformation experience to deliver end-to-end solutions that are fully aligned to business strategy. He has authored or coauthored multiple books and transformation methodologies and was an originating contributor to “A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge.” Prior to founding Tactical Strategy Group in 1990, Mr. Ulrich served as management consultant, spending the bulk of the 1980s with KPMG where he helped mature its software reengineering practice. His latest writings focus on the cognitive enterprise, transitioning to the circular economy and business-driven IT architecture transformation.
