A Runaway IT Project Failure

By Dan Morrill
Expert Author
Article Date: 2008-06-19

Bruce F Webster on his blog this morning at brucefwebster.com has a fascinating article called "anatomy of a runaway IT project". For those of us who are fascinated or studying IT Project Failure, this is well worth reading.

Right now his server is under some serious load as he gets slashdotted, and digged into the dirt, but overall, when you can get to the article, there are some hard cold facts that face all project managers, in that we tend to reward the good news, and kill the messenger on the bad news. What happens when all the news is bad, when the project schedule slips not just once, but many times, or the project will just not die because of unrealistic expectations?

The project in question was a major IT re-engineering effort for a mission-critical system; at the time I did this review, the project had been going on for several years and had cost millions of dollars; it would eventually be canceled and the work products abandoned. The memo itself provides an interesting glimpse into just how a major IT project can go so far off the tracks that nothing useful is ever delivered. Source: BF Webster

If you have been in IT for any length of time you have seen this project, or worst yet been involved in this project. The real problem comes into the mix when listening/communications and trust no longer operate because of the way that the company is running the project. It is common business knowledge that the closer you get to the person running the process, the more comments, and the more blunt comments you are going to get.

The problem is intensified in IT, as we have a number of problems, like ego, the belief in the herculean effort to finish the project, the lack of communications, or social skills on the part of a development team, the desire to do a great many things, as well as the frustration that nothing is ever going to be done on a project in "just the right way".

In all an interesting read on a runaway IT project, and worth taking the time to read on this one, if you have been in IT long enough, you have seen more than your share of similar projects.

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About the Author:
Dan Morrill runs Techwag, a site all about his views on social media, education, technology, and some of the more interesting things that happen on the internet. He works at CityU of Seattle as the Program Director for the Computer Science, Information Systems and Information Security educational programs.