**9. Project executives lacked domain expertise**

told by the external review? It is not immediately obvious why this situation was allowed to unfold in the manner in which it did. The project appeared to comply with all the appropriate governance structures and reporting requirements, yet an historical or retrospective view would allow that the project was never managed effectively. Indeed, the findings of the Commission of Inquiry [28] state that 'Its (Queensland Health payroll) failure, attended by enormous cost, damage to government and impact on workforce, may be the most spectacular example of all the unsuccessful attempts to impose a uniform solution on a highly complicated and individualised agency'. The Commissions conclusion was that there were two primary causes for the failure of the payroll project (1) 'unwarranted urgency' and (2) a 'lack of diligence on behalf of State officials' [28]. The Commissions report elaborated further on lack of diligence, describing it as 'poor decisions made in scoping the Interim Solution, in their Governance of the project, and in failing to hold IBM to account' [28]. The Commissioner further reported that 'the problems are systemic to government and to the natural commercial self-interest of vendors' [28] which supports the observation that Normalisation of Deviance was at play throughout the conduct of this project. However, these findings by the Commission do not explain what motivated senior management to ignore the lessons learned from immediately preceding projects, to ignore the warnings and advice of their own personnel. It is unclear, from the Commissions report, what specific steps a subsequent project might

These are the clear and obvious failures of the project: project management failed, there was a lack of requirements definition, management was in conflict. All of the issues which appear

Of potential significance is that the evidence provided by witness statements mapped to the project chronology showed that issues related to the identified themes were raised by staff and consultants throughout the project phases, and yet they still they remained as issues that were not resolved nor remediated at the time they were raised. The evidence is that management was made aware of these failures. So it was not a lack of awareness of the failure risks, and therefore highlighting these as the contributory factors of project failure lacks explanatory completeness.

As was evident from the analysis of the witness statements - management was regularly informed of what was going on with their project by both staff and external consultants [37]. Management knew that the project was facing problems (or at least should have known). The reports on the 2005 Whole-of-Government initiative [38], the KPMG Report [30], the KJ Ross report on testing [39], the IBM and CorpTech report to 'reconstruct' the business requirements [31] and the 2009 Queensland Audit Office report [40] all provided clear statements identifying where the project was failing and what needed to be done to remedy the situation. Yet the problems persisted until the total project costs had blown out to beyond A\$1 billion. Faced with the clear and certain statement that the project was performing badly, and with specific statements of where the project was failing, successive managements failed to act appropriately to stem the problems. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this failure to act

implement to ensure that they too did not all into these traps.

in the literature on failed projects—nothing new or unexpected!

**8. The big question … WHY?**

36 Dark Sides of Organizational Behavior and Leadership

'Organisational artefacts such as mission statements, goals and objectives, strategic plans and the like function as tools to reduce choice, not to guide it' [42]. In the same manner, the specification of requirements, the business case, the architecture and solution design of the project are all intended to constrain choice to deliver 'order'. In the QH project 'order' should have been represented by a defined scope of work, a defined project plan which sets out not only what work will be done, but also what work will not be done, and by an agreed contract. None of these things existed on the QH payroll project, and any efforts to enforce them were resisted by the vendor with the support (tacit or otherwise) of Departmental executives.

The issue of transparent flows of information between parties, of experts being able to make informed decisions utilising tacit information compared to less experienced people needing to 'follow the script' [43], of actors controlling the release of information, and of stakeholders presenting different versions of themselves across multiple stages becomes critical when one considers both the makeup of the governance and management of the QH project and the individuals involved. 'The involvement of non-IT stakeholders can actually work detrimentally and confound and confuse proceedings, even causing error' [15]. Non-IT experienced management, placed in a position of authority 'may be influenced by some suppliers or colleagues to whose IT knowledge they had access, and insist on a certain course of action' [15] which may result in confusion, delay or inappropriate decision-making, and contribute to the risk of IT project failure.

An appropriate lens through which to view this performance construct is referred to as the Dunning-Kruger Effect [44]. This effect is where the less competent an individual is with respect to a particular domain then the more they are likely to overstate their perceived knowledge and ability. This may be referred to as a 'confidence/competence dissonance'. Individuals that lack competence in a particular domain (incompetent) but are not self-aware of their lack of competence, generally perceive their performance to be not significantly inferior to those who possess significant competence, training and ability (the experts).

representation at board or executive level of organisational governing management. Only 15% of organisations had board members with any IT-related qualifications, and in their United Kingdom (UK) sample, no organisation exhibited board level oversight of organisational IT through qualified representation directly as a board member. A focus on general business competence over specific IT competence continues at the CIO level where less than 50% of CIOs in the United States of America (US) public sector had primary qualifications from technical or engineering backgrounds [48]. Management and leadership is devoid of the

Situational Incompetence: An Investigation into the Causes of Failure of a Large-Scale IT Project

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.76791

39

Narcissism, in modern terms has been defined as 'a person who possesses an extreme love of the self, a grandiose sense of self-importance, and a powerful sense of entitlement' [49], and while generally applied to individuals, the concept of narcissistic personalities has also been applied to groups and organisations [50]. Of significance in this research is that 'the narcissistic personality is characterised by the denial of a difference between the ideal and the actual self' [50] which segues directly into the studies of competence versus confidence by Kruger and Dunning [44] and Ryvkin, Krajc and Ortmann [45]. The narcissistic leader that holds 'very inflated self-views and (is) preoccupied with having those self-views continuously reinforced [51], was a behaviour which was evident on the Queensland Health payroll project, where the evidence suggested that the project was in trouble this was discounted or ignored because it did not fit the 'self-image' of the project leader that everything was under control. Narcissistic leaders in organisations are more likely to engage in behaviour which might lead to failing standards and reduced ethical and moral behaviour [52] which could be seen to be an antecedent for the 'normalisation of deviance'. As standards fall, decision by decision, what is considered normal behaviour slowly erodes until a 'new normal' gradually and

Narcissism is growing and becoming more prevalent and we can expect to see an increase in organisational narcissism as a direct consequence. Twenge and Foster [53] found that 'there has been a 30% tilt towards narcissistic attitudes in US students since 1979', and that 'The Narcissism Epidemic' [54] breeds 'the idea that being highly self-confident is the key to success'. Twenge and Campbell [55] were at pains to point out that there is no correlation between confidence and successful outcomes. Kremer [54] reported that 'over 15,000 journal articles have examined the links between high self-esteem and measurable outcomes in real life, such as educational achievement, job opportunities, popularity, health, happiness and adherence to laws and social codes' and found no correlation or causation. Highly confident, narcissistic project leaders are likely to exhibit behaviours that would put projects at risk. They over-estimate their own abilities, and are incapable of observing competence in others and learning by observing others. Narcissistic project leaders will be 'blind' to evidence that does not support their distorted view of their own abilities and of the status of the project for

'Over the last 30 years confidence has replaced competence' [54]. Positive thinking has replaced knowledge. An increase in narcissism correlates with the unskilled and unaware

skills needed to understand or lead complex information technology projects.

**10. Narcissism and leadership competence**

almost imperceptibly emerges.

which they are accountable.

This phenomena has also been described as the Unskilled and Unaware Problem (UUP) [45]. Essentially UUP argues that individuals that are unskilled in a particular domain overestimate their own competence in both absolute terms and relative terms. Top performers underestimate their absolute and relative performance. Kruger and Dunning [44] found that an unskilled person was more likely to dramatically misstate their absolute and relative competence. Ehrlinger et al. [46] have argued that UUP is a persistent feature of decision-making. Furthermore, and potentially much more concerning for complex IT projects, Kruger and Dunning [44] determined that the skills necessary to do the job, are the same skills necessary to identify competence in others. This facet of the UUP research is particularly important when an unskilled individual is placed in a position of decision-making authority, in this case with respect to an IT Project. Where an unskilled individual possesses neither the skills necessary to do the job, nor the skills necessary to identify competence in others they are not in a position to make informed decisions on complex issues. The application of this principle to the Queensland Health Payroll project would suggest that the Executive Director, the Department Secretary, and the governance boards lacked the skills needed to identify competence in others, and to comprehend informed advice when it was provided, preferring instead to rely upon those with similar personality attributes as themselves.

Engelbrecht et al. [15] aimed to 'identify whether a causal relationship exists between the various components of business managers' IT competence and IT success'. What they found was that a 'business managers' IT competence can, and does, exert a substantial influence on project success'. They reported a 'surprising' finding where a lack of knowledge or competence was likely to have a negative impact on project outcomes, 'although one would have expected a positive relationship and a positive impact, it has been reported that the involvement of non-IT stakeholders can actually work detrimentally and confound and confuse proceedings, even causing errors'.

Engelbrecht et al. [15] also found that 'business managers may be influenced by some suppliers or colleagues to whose IT knowledge they had access, and insist on a certain course of action. If that business manager is particularly influential in an organisation, then there could be similar confusions, delays, and even inappropriate decisions'. This finding is reflective of the behaviours referred to in the Witness Statements. The senior executives of Queensland Health deferred to the advice of the vendor, rather than their own staff. The researcher in this instance has neither the data nor the training to consider the role of amoral actors in this project, and has elected instead to make the assumption that the entire collective management must have been acting with the best intent for the Department (even if individual actors may have been compromised). This leads the researcher to conclude that it is a lack of knowledge of information technology projects, and the executives inability to parse the information being presented that lays the foundations of a theory to explain how the Queensland Health payroll project became so dysfunctional and ended in failure.

Given the importance of information technologies to business success, and their presence in almost every endeavour, one would expect to see an increase in technically literate, skilled or experienced managements to provide effective oversight and governance. Coertze and von-Solms [47] found that 10% of organisations had Chief Information Officer (CIO) or equivalent representation at board or executive level of organisational governing management. Only 15% of organisations had board members with any IT-related qualifications, and in their United Kingdom (UK) sample, no organisation exhibited board level oversight of organisational IT through qualified representation directly as a board member. A focus on general business competence over specific IT competence continues at the CIO level where less than 50% of CIOs in the United States of America (US) public sector had primary qualifications from technical or engineering backgrounds [48]. Management and leadership is devoid of the skills needed to understand or lead complex information technology projects.
