Your company could use better workflow management. Problem is, so could your information-technology projects.

As a large commercial printer, your company tracks far-flung details for its customers, everything from paper orders and ink temperatures to press deadlines and delivery logistics. A custom workflow management application will track these tasks in a clear fashion, make your clients and customer service staff more efficient, and produce significant savings.

In theory, anyway. Because your technology projects have a nasty habit of taking twice as long, costing twice as much and working half as well as promised. So while you revamp your customers' workflow, revise your technology staff's workflow as well. Start with project-management software that will help the PM more efficiently track and forecast schedules, assignments and costs. Separate software tools for the rest of the team will target specific development tasks, such as requirements, modeling, testing and feedback.

Your technology staff won't master these new tools overnight, of course, so budget time and money up front for the necessary training. And unlike previous projects, this one won't unfold in a vacuum. Plan to regularly involve a dedicated pilot group of key clients and your own customer service staff during the one-year development cycle. Engaging the people who will actually use the application throughout a development project is another key to ensuring its success, says Michael Kelly, senior software quality specialist at CTI Group, an Indianapolis-based business software consultancy.

"Feedback from the users is probably the most important aspect to software quality," Kelly says. "If they can't find the value in what you are developing—even if what you develop is what they said they thought they wanted—then the quality of the product is low."

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