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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

CIO Insights Slide Show on IT Project Failure

CIO Insight recently posted a slideshow titled Why IT Projects Get Killed. They listed 5 major reasons for killing IT projects:

  1. Business needs changed: 30%
  2. Does not deliver as promised: 23%
  3. No longer a priority: 14%
  4. Exceeds budget: 13%
  5. Does not support business strategy: 7%
The data was based on a recent survey of 167 IT executives.

In my career, I've experienced most of these reasons at one time or another, particularly with large projects. Obviously large projects, projects that take a lot of time and resources, run the risk of changes in business needs. They also run the risk of no longer being a priority for an organization. This often occurs when the project sponsor leaves the company or moves to another role. These projects can also fall victim to scope creep which if not managed correctly causes them to exceed budgets. I'm somewhat surprised that it ranked 4th on the list. As far as not supporting business strategy, I've rarely, if ever, seen a project fail for this reason.

What do you think?

2 comments:

Luke said...

Reason 1 (Business needs changed) can also create the eternal project. I started a simple project 5 years ago that took about two-months to complete. I am still rewriting it (literally) today.

Rick said...

Good point Luke! Hopefully you're getting paid to rewrite it :)

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