Heard a good quote last week that I think is important to identity projects….
“Get fired up with enthusiasm, or you will be fired with enthusiasm…”
While this is a cute, rah-rah saying, it does represent my thoughts on how an identity project leader should approach the opportunity. In fact, would go so far as to say this is a requirement for project success.
Identity projects will go outside the IT boundaries and require the lead to try and convince other enterprise stakeholders of the benefits of allowing your project to manage their identities and compliance reviews. This is naturally something they do not want to do. So any spark of enthusiasm will help. As we have said many times, one of the most difficult obsticles to overcome on identity projects is user manager mind share.
Imagine you are owner of the Oracle ERP system and some special identity project manager comes into your office and says you have to spend valuable resource time to his team so he/she can take over adding and managing users and security roles within your Sarbannes Oxley level one application.
Needless to say, you have to win over the mindshare of the Oracle ERP team in order to get anything done. So you have to be enthusiastic and sell why this is a good thing for the Oracle. Sure, some of the user administration duties will be handled automatically, but the budget for user administration (upwards of 20% of annual budget) can be reduced and used for other projects. (Ah, now you are their friend, saving money and allowing them to do new projects!)
So don’t try and bully the resource owners. Instead, be enthusiastic about Identity Project and the benefits it brings not only to your resource owners, but the company as a whole. They can not be excited unless you are.
Because, if you can manage an identity project successfully, you can ride it to the next level in your career. But make no mistake; it can also end your career. Many times this has occurred to the identity project lead who did not manage the project well, listen to his team, and win the mindset of the resource adapters. It is not a pretty picture.
So stay on top of the enthusiasm level on your project. Or you will be fired with enthusiasm…
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