Why do IT projects fail?

According to numerous project management surveys, more than 50% of businesses surveyed had experienced IT project failures (either in full or in  certain extents) during their IT project implementation process. I personally experienced an instance that a significant public company had failed twice in their major ERP project implementation continuously within 3 years. While the top causes of IT project failure are different in the different studies, the major common causes of project failure during the lifecycle of the project including:

• Incomplete and/or changing user requirements;
• Lack of user involvements;
• communications breakdown between relevant parties;
• lack of proper planning;
• overall poor management;
• lack of top management involvement and support;
• vendor under resourced and/or team not consistent; and
• vendors’ inability to meet commitments.

The role that team members play in a project always creates a significant bias in the project failure. It is natural that members believe the responsibility for failure lies outside their scope of control. IT directors are more likely to blame failure on the end-users and/or on the vendor. Similarly, end-users will blame on the IT department and/or on the vendor, while vendor will blame it on its customers.

Generally, IT project failures are rarely considered as purely technical. Even very experienced project managers are confronted with unmet situations. It may indicate the lack of synergy and coordination between IT, users, management and vendors.

Success of a IT project results from blending numerous and demanding conditions, including good project management, accurate articulation of user requirements, adequate attention to business needs, keeping all relevant parties engaged, appropriate user involvements, etc.   Overview of these conditions by experience and special matter expert is definitely  worthwhile reviewing before and during the course of a strategic IT project.