Why do IT projects fail?

Fewer than a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on budget in 2016 (source: Standish Group).

So why is this? 

The University of Ottawa claims that 33% of projects fail due to lack of involvement from senior management.  I think this is a very telling statistic.  Having a clear project sponsor is one thing, but if that sponsor is not heavily involved in the project then how can it align to the companies strategic objectives?  The reality is it can't.

From a project management perspective most PMO groups close down within three years.  75% of project managers are also not certified.

A few good programmers, a technical lead and a strong solution architect can make a real difference.  Follow best practices, for example, write your unit test cases to fail, and then write code to make them work. So many programmers test their code after the fact.  This completely defeats the purpose of unit testing.

Keeping code simple, well commented, abstracted to the right level, having white space for readability, coding standards and a solid build and deployment strategy are also critical to a projects success.

The next key area is solution architecture.  This is especially critical in the data space.  Many systems are designed by developing the UI first with the supporting data model an afterthought.  With the growth of Big Data and the power of Analytics, a project needs to know up front what data should be captured.  It should also design for key integration points now and in the future.

Finally lets look at testing and infrastructure.  Many projects don't have clean, dedicated testing environments.  With the growth of cloud infrastructure, there should be no excuse anymore for not having clean testing environments.  A master test plan is also something that is commonly overlooked.  Without an overall testing strategy, test cases are developed in isolation.  Getting business or user buy in for UAT is also critical.  Plan ahead to avoid priority conflicts which so often delay projects towards the end.

Above all, projects fail as organizations don't work together across IT, the business, finance, operations, infrastructure and even HR.  All departments have a direct or indirect interest in ensuring projects succeed.  Working together with clear communication and breaking down internal silo's can help your project success rate increase rapidly in 2017.