Do Your IT Projects Take Too Long ?

A common complaint in many businesses is that IT projects are easy to start, but hard to finish. Often they take far longer than intended, or cost far more, or simply fizzle out. The reasons for doing them become blurred, and the expected benefit doesn’t materialise. Why is this, and what can be done about it ?

One common problem is that the project might actually be impossible for the company at that time, not technically, but organisationally: the company is just not organised correctly to deliver the desired outcome.

To take a concrete example, many companies we speak to have a project list, discussed weekly at the management meeting. And every week, project milestones are missed, and pushed back a week. Seeing this happen again and again really drains away the confidence that IT can deliver, and is demoralising for those working on the project.

This is usually a symptom of an organisational problem: that the project has been started in circumstances which will make it hard to complete. It is rare that such projects are technically impossible: usually they fail for very simple organisational reasons: for example, the IT staff involved are doing too many things at once, and can’t devote enough time to it, or that they are doing support as well as development, and thus spend their days reacting to problems rather than pursuing the new project.

We can help your projects to succeed by ensuring they start in the best possible circumstances. We can provide advice on IT planning, as well as rolling our sleeves up and getting involved during the start-up phase of the project. Finally, our IT Health Check is a good way of assessing how the project process works in your organisation, and what you can do to avoid those demoralising milestone meetings.