Eight Causes of Project Failures: UK Government IT Projects

From the POST report on UK Government IT projects, there are some insightful lessons on why projects fail. Now if we could only get the world to bring those into play early. We could avoid many project failures. Note number 6…. not taking the total ownership cost into account. That is why we stress total ownership costs (which many organizations don’t want to worry about until it is too late).

1. Lack of a clear link between the project and the organisation’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.

2 Lack of clear senior management and ministerial ownership and leadership.

3. Lack of effective engagement with Stakeholders.

4. Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management.

5. Lack of understanding of and contact with the supply industry at senior levels within the organisation.

6. Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing the delivery of business benefits).

7. Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps.

8. Inadequate resources and skill to deliver the total delivery portfolio.

Related posts:

1. Government IT Project Woes and Estimating Total Ownership Costs A recent government report showed 81% of budget or $57 billion in IT projects in danger of failing. Detailed reports...
2. Government IT Projects: Opportunity For More Success I heard of a wonderful blog on Zdnet regarding additional oversight and transparency in Government IT projects costs, schedule: S.920...
3. 7 Characteristics of Dysfunctional Software Projects From Mike Evans, Coauthor of my book on Software Sizing, and Risk Management while studying over 350 projects: Failure to...
4. Software failures Cost Billions Part 2 Note part 1 Software failures cost billions contains numerous studies, etc.  I broke it into parts due to limitations of...
5. Why Projects Fail From A Technical and Process Viewpoint There was an interesting article in SDtimes  The article claims that “Most cases of failure that I have seen have...

Comments

One Response to “Eight Causes of Project Failures: UK Government IT Projects”

1. nalusibajuliet on December 8th, 2011 9:30 am

   too little for my research but thank you

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