Is Your IT Project At Risk From One Of These Commonly Ignored Problems?

As a project manager you're continually aware that large numbers of people in the businesses you go into are completely unaware of the pitfalls of IT projects.

Bart Perkins believes, less kindly, that we know about them but choose to ignore them.

He's written an article called "12 Things You Know About Projects But Choose To Ignore" where he lists 12 major points.

I may well have covered these in a previous posting. However, Bart's article makes interesting reading so I've listed the 12 points of possible project failure that Bart expands on:

1. ineffective executive sponsor
2. poor business case
3. No longer valid business case
4. Project too big
5. Lack of dedicated resources
6. Supplier failures
7. Unnecessary complexity
8. Cultural conflict
9. No contigency
10. Too long without deliverables
11. Using unproven technology
12. Arbitrary release date

 

I'd add a further two to the mix:

1. Internal teams not being treated like external suppliers
2. Lack of management response to problem escalation

It's likely that almost every company knows exactly how projects should be managed. Certainly that's why Prince 2 and sundry other methodologies and tools are used to support the "correct way" to project manage.

So the question becomes one of "Why do projects still go wrong?"

 

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