Technology projects often fail because business employees are left out of the loop, according to one credit union IT manager here.
"The 'people dimension' in Information Technology is most often ignored and is where the challenges most often occur," asserted Eric Thompson, IT project coordinator at $810-million Hawaii State FCU.
A number of credit union executives have reported to The Credit Union Journal over the years that business employees are frequently the last-and lasting-obstacle to a successful technology implementation.
In fact, employee resistance is what most often derails any change in business, according to a 2005 study by Prosci Research, a business process design firm in Loveland, Colo. Resistance is caused mainly by a lack of awareness about the change, the study said.
In response, credit union leaders must adopt a "change management" approach to IT, Thompson continued.
"The key ingredient in the emerging model of change management is the role and element of people and users," he explained.
One recent change management model is dubbed ADKAR, which proposes that businesses experience change at two levels: the business dimension and the people dimension.
The ADKAR acronym represents the five phases of change that employees experience during a technology project, specifically Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. ADKAR was developed in 1998 by Prosci Research.
Thompson thinks that ADKAR and other change management approaches, such as Richard Nolan's Stages Theory, can address the failure of IT at the employee level.
"Change is painful-but change is necessary, what with the performance of technology doubling every 18 months," he said.
"If we properly deal with the 'people factor' and improve on people skills across the board, our IT department can also enhance its relationships with the rest of the credit union," Thompson added.
At BECU in Seattle, CIO Butch Leonardson addresses the "people" challenge by mixing together financial services experts with technology experts.
"The IT organization needs to look at the world through a business lens, not an IT lens," Leonardson explained. "At BECU, we try to have at least 30% of our staff in the IT Division come from a financial services background."
Indeed, when IT and business leaders put their heads together, the air is ripe for innovation, according to a recent study by Forrester Research, a technology advisory firm in Cambridge, Mass. This combination of know-how and intensive communication inevitably turns the focus on two important parts of project implementation: project rollout and testing, Leonardson continued.
"'Rollout' is assuring organizational readiness," said Leonardson. "'Testing' is where the business unit staff can have an active and vital role. Functional testing and integration testing should be performed by business unit staff."
Thompson added that managers must learn to communicate to employees why a change in technology is necessary and why a new system may not deliver exactly as expected.
"If people rely psychologically on one minor thing that's missing or different in the new system, then they trash the whole project," he said.
Change management isn't the only IT model, but it's the only one that considers people, Thompson said. Other approaches, such as Systems Development Life Cycle and Rapid Application Development, focus on deployment procedures and user feedback.
"Those philosophies had one thing missing-the people and how they played a role in the successful use of systems," said Thompson.
CUJ Resources
For additional info:
* Hawaii State FCU www.hsfcu.com
* Prosci Research www.prosci.com
* Harvard Business School www.hbs.edu/research
