How Can You Increase the Velocity of Your IG Projects?

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In our last look inside the IGI Annual Report 2015-2016, the industry’s most comprehensive research on information governance (IG) as a concept, profession, and market, we looked at what IG projects practitioners are working on or had planned in the next year. Today, we look at how long it takes for IG projects to get started and some ideas on how organizations can move them along faster.

We asked practitioners how long it takes a typical IG project to begin at their organizations from the time it is first conceptualized to the time that money and people are allocated to the project and it actually begins. We asked providers the same about their customers. Here is what we found.

IG projects take too long to get started. Most practitioners reported that it can take a year or more. We believe this is indicative of a lack of formality in corporate governance and decision-making structures around IG. In other words, at most organizations, it is still unclear where the budget comes from or who is in charge. This means more drawn-out processes that are often a threat to project success, as many of our benchmarking interviewees attested. (See Stories in Information Governance: The IGI 2015 Benchmarking Report).

Providers also report long lag times for IG projects to get started at their customers, although those lag times are shorter than what practitioners report for themselves. This may reflect that providers are being brought into IG projects later in the decision making process.

How does your organization compare to these project timelines? If your typical project is taking a year or more to start, you are certainly not alone. But do not take solace in this fact. While many IG projects are complex, remember that we are just talking about the time it takes to get started here, not how long it takes to actually do the project (which legitimately may take years, not months, like any enterprise project). Use this as a call to action to put foundational elements of your program in place so that you can speed up these times.

We expect this to improve as IG leaders emerge. A clearer understanding of what IG is and what it can achieve, as well as clarification of IG leadership and operational models, will help. This is a central mission of the IGI, and we address it throughout the Annual Report.

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