Customer Reviews

Why Do IT (Information Technology) Projects Fail? (and how to avoid such failures)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

27 long years in the IS industry and sometimes I wonder about the progress that we have made. We are still pouring money on systems that our users dont want. The truth is that its all very basic stuff. follow those basics and your staff and the users of those systems will be happy.

these 30 pages remind you of all those basics, which IS organizations should have been following long ago, but they are not. we keep repeating those mistakes. you wont find aything in this ebook about programming or proj management methodologies (re - another reviewer's comments)- you will get what this page says in the description. if you still buy it, you wont be disappointed. Once you buy it, post it for constant reminders or get it in your company's processes.

Covers the primary points that executives should look for in ensuring project success. Build these issues into your organization.

With so much information out there on project management that keeps changing daily, you can take this peice of advice and minimize your failure rate. But, do not rely on this to become an expert on project management (it is 31 pages long).

Like the 1995 "Chaos Report" by the Standish Group, this 30 page document succinctly gives the key reasons for IT project failure. However, this one goes into more detail, although the basic reasons persist.

If you're an experienced project manager your first response to this book will probably be that it states the obvious. However, that isn't necessarily bad since it does so in a clearly presented manner. More importantly, this book does state the obvious and can serve as a benchmark of practices during the preliminary stages of a project. In fact, it should be required reading by every key stakeholder and project team member before a major IT project is initiated.

It's short enough to be read in an hour, and is complete enough to provide a framework for a generic project risk management plan. More importantly, it can be easily understood by both technical and business stakeholders, and will get everyone on the same page during the project planning phase, while exposing the pitfalls that will be encountered along the way.

...It's been put together who knows only the theoretical concepts of IT project management and doesn't seem to have any real-world IT experience. I am sorry I bought this - its too Text booky without any book in it.
... it is simply too basic, and it still provides no new approach of mitigating IT Project risk. Most large-scale IT projects already do whats mentioned in the book: good project scoping, technology evaluation, ROI measurements but projects still fail.

I've been an IT project manager for a while and I have to say this book is really quite disappointing. It's not worth [the money]and certainly not with the time spent reading it.

Not exactly a "book." At 31 pages this provided some good summary information, but is more of a white paper in pdf format.

This article was a disapprovement.

If my uncle was about to lead an application development project, he could have written this article (he's a building entrepreneur).

Project management by describing all parts of the project, estimating time on each task, etc., etc. - we all know it. I'd state that most IT projects have been administered this way, only it isn't enough.

If you're interested in developing skills on delivering projects on schedule, do rather study what's written on Xtreme Programming or Feature Driven Programming. Those concepts address problems with application development from somewhat new angles. This article doesn't.

If this surprises you that a problem with many IT projects is they don't pay off as much as promised. - go on and spend your nine dollars.