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Meet ‘The Fixer’ for troubled IT projects
His job as an objective third party is to “either kill-or-cure” tech projects that have gone awry
By Thomas Wailgum, CIO.com
Jason Coyne describes his unusual
job in many ways: Marriage counselor.
The Equalizer. Relationship
guru. Project conscience. Resolution
manager. The Fixer.
Coyne’s job as an objective third party
is to “either kill-or-cure” tech projects
that have gone awry. The managing
partner at UK-based Evolution Project
Consulting firm claims to have worked
on more than 500 different projects in
the UK and abroad since the 1990s. “Not
all disputes,” Coyne adds, “but most of
them have been.”
CIO.com spoke with Coyne about the
ill-fated patterns and emotional traps
that most tech implementation teams
fall prey to, how he “sells” himself to
his customers, and why companies often
forget about a project’s original goals
during implementations
CIO.com: How do you describe your
job?
Jason Coyne: I describe it as “marriage
guidance for technology agreements.”
Just as different, diverse people come
together in a marriage, different and
diverse organizations come together to
form a project. And when there’s fallout,
they need somebody independent to help
mediate and resolve the disputes.
I just help people understand why
they’re in this relationship, this agreement.
Usually, they lose sight of what
their goals are—I bring that back to the
forefront of the attention and they start
focusing on the common goals.
CIO.com: Who typically hires you?
Coyne: Generally it’s the purchasing
party, sometimes the technology vendor
or systems integrator. But [my services
can be hired] for anything to do with
technology and a commercial dispute, if
there’s a contract and a legal agreement
in place.
CIO.com: How did you get into this?
Coyne: I started as a fourth-generation
language programmer—creating business
control software, accounting and
manufacturing software in the late
1980s. I didn’t really enjoy programming,
but I saw how things got created
and implemented a number of these systems
I helped develop.
In the early ‘90s, one of the systems
I’d helped build ended up getting into
dispute. One of the companies found me
and [asked me] to give evidence about
the way the software was put together, so
I gave evidence in a trial of the software
that I helped write.
CIO.com: Why do companies contact you?
Coyne: The more visionary customers
understand that I will likely know how
to steer them through the murky waters
of their technology implementation and
how to avoid [failure] in the future.
I’m working with some major global
companies on dispute-avoidance, as “the
voice of reason” on a monthly or sixweek
basis. It helps people see what’s
important to the project, because project
teams invariably get too involved in the
details, and lose sight of the direction of
where the project is actually going.
CIO.com: Do you usually get a warm or
frosty reception?
Coyne: Historically I’ve been the customers’
champion, and in court cases,
I’ve generally been acting as counsel to
the customer against the big, bad technology
supplier that’s let them down.
So often it’s a frosty reception from the
computer vendors.
CIO.com: How do you sell yourself to all
these groups of people involved?
Coyne: I’ve got to demonstrate credibility,
and the way to do that is to show
them that I’m vehemently independent.
I might be instructed by the purchasing
organization (the end-user) or when I
might be instructed by the technology
provider (the supplier). But if either of
the parties has failed to discharge their
obligations to the agreement, then I will
be constructively critical of either party.
The way that I convince people to
contract with me is to explain to them
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10 Computerworld Hong Kong Nov 2009 www.cw.com.hk