The Digital Edge Blog

Many organizations seem to have trouble delivering on IT projects they start…

There have been numerous studies into why so many IT projects fail to deliver on their initial promises. (Some studies put the number as high as 70%) Reasons cited typically include poor IT management skills, poor specifications, lack of user involvement, scope creep, and poor testing. Having been involved with many IT related projects, I know first hand that all of these can play a role in creating these IT ‘projects from hell’. But there is also another issue in play here that’s obvious to everyone involved in IT, but isn’t often articulated.

Most IT projects are born and grow up in political environments…

Many organizations, especially large ones, have very complex political ecosystems. There are egos involved in decisions that cry out for a dispassionate hand. There are multiple competing agendas vying for limited company funding and attention. There are the many stakeholders in the ’status quo’ that actively resist any changes that could threaten their position.

And there the ‘high level’ project sponsors that protect their pet projects from any meaningful critical review…

When those elements are tossed into the mix with the usual challenges associated with successfully delivering an IT project on time and within budget, it places incredible demands on everyone involved and requires a manager that is willing to fight to make sure the correct decisions are being made for the correct reasons. An unfortunate fact is that it’s hard to find these types of managers, most especially at the organizations that could use them the most. Fighting the political tide is a thankless, dirty job that rarely helps a person’s career. It eventually chases most qualified managers away. And the void in quality typically ends up being filled by the tech equivalent of corporate ‘yes men’.

The kind that believe the toughest part of a project is making a PowerPoint…

I believe that politics plays a far larger role in the failure of IT projects than most people recognize. Anyone that has been around IT long enough could tell you stories: The massive ‘conceptual’ projects that are able to get started even though everyone involved knows they are doomed to fail. The commitments made to clients or prospects that are clearly unrealistic, yet get written into contracts. The deals made to partner with specific technology vendors without involving real technology people in the decision.

There is no shortage of these examples…

Many of the other ’causes’ cited for failed IT projects are actually symptoms of more fundamental political forces that set them in motion in the first place. No matter what other steps an organization takes to get a handle on run-away IT projects, they will continue to happen unless political decisions can be largely replaced by practical ones.

Needless to say, I don’t expect this problem to go away any time soon!…