"Systems work; people don't"

Last week, someone on my project team made a very wise observation that "Systems work; people don't". As negative and depressing as this sounds, when it comes to transformation projects involving technology, this statement is a real nugget of truth.

If we look at a project in three parts - people, process, and technology - the technology part has a much greater chance of success if the team simply goes through the standard practices of business requirements, testing, interfaces, etc. (and here I do not know a lot). With the people part, a team can communicate, train, and manage change through best practices until they are blue in the face, but there is never any guarantee of even the smallest success.

The technology will never manifest its doubt and fear of change by spreading damaging rumours or sabotaging the project in other ways. People will. Technology will not ignore the messages you send it (Like "change this field or that function"). People will ignore messages about new procedures, processes, or even new forms to use. Technology will not skip training or encourage others to skip training as an act of rebellion against a change. People will. And depending on the amount of time and change management resources available, a team may have little to no chance of identifying whose the saboteurs might be before-hand. Whereas, a team can tell in advance if a system is not working properly through testing.