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So much has been written about how to control implementation attempts. From the principles of breaking up and resource allocation, to the latest methodology which will guarantee victory, a lot of us have spent countless hours focusing on the process of driving an implementation to completion. The time spent of pouring over business cases and perspiration through meetings with C-suite colleagues all strives towards this proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, whether it's a celebration of success or acknowledgment of defeat.

Even though IT has grown immeasurably better in getting off the starting blocks and running the race, we're very bad at knowing what to do once we have gotten to the end line. The Failure of Success. One of the greatest risks to an IT organization's ability to supply future effective implementations is that of a past achievement.

Moments after recovering from post-implementation celebrations, IT leaders and staffers breathe a collective sigh of relief, and then immediately ask "now what," scattering in the direction of the following opportunity. Consultants are dismissed to control costs, and business users gallop back to their past positions hoping to market their job experience into higher positions in their previous organization. Years of job documentation have been hastily shuffled to a folder on a shared drive someplace, and business cases with painstaking return calculations have been filled into binders, destined to gather dust to years. Failed jobs create an identical rush of people, from consultants rushing for the exit as soon as another client appears, to project employees abandoning ship for the fear which the failed job will leave a mark on their record.

No one would like to find out the bits, or crop anything of value lest they be associated with "which" job. Whatever valuable process designs, technical solutions or new tools which have been developed are abandoned, further diluting the losses incurred from the failed project. Build a Better Project. The intent of all these activities: Obtaining anything of value in an implementation which can be leveraged in a future endeavor, closing a job efficiently and ensuring people are rewarded and also their abilities understood independently of the status of a job, are all tools to make future implementations more successful. Combining these attempts with a periodical summary of past implementations that monitors them against their original business cases can improve an organizations ability to design jobs and predict their returns. Blend this "post mortem" review with effective management of the closing process and you will capture additional value that's traditionally left untapped, especially in the case of an unsuccessful effort.

After all, getting to the finish point is only half the battle, capitalizing on achievement or learning from failure will give you a head start before the following implementation even begins.

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