PROJECT FAILURES

Project Failures

Project Failures

Introduction

It is well documented in information systems (IS) literature, that the majority of systems development, and, technology implementation projects are unsuccessful, whether they are late, over-budget, abandoned, or fail to achieve the desired results or intended objectives of the clients. In the failed projects, there was commonly insufficient communication with clients, and, no discernible return on investment relative to a business need. While higher education cannot directly address information systems projects failure, educators can target the need to build collaboration skills, and, sensitivity to project social issues in students. Building these skills in future information systems project members will lead to greater awareness of issues that can contribute to IT project failure. The inference is that, through building collaborative skills, students can become more successful in recognizing, and, addressing the critical social risk issues in projects with team members. The main goals of this assignment are building these skills in future information systems, and, project members will lead to greater awareness of issues that can contribute to IT project failure. The inference is that, through building collaborative skills, students can become more successful in recognizing and addressing the critical social risk issues in projects with team members.

The state of Government IT

The Government spends about £16bn per year on IT. The spending has been growing steadily in recent years and, without radical intervention, shows no sign of abating. A compelling number of studies have found that about one quarter of all IT projects in both the public and private sector, cancelled, and, about half, delivered late, over budget or both. This would suggest that public funds in the order of several billion pounds per year invested by the Government in failed IT projects. In 2005 Edward Leith, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, commented that: “Far too often major IT enabled projects in government departments are late, well over budget, or do not work at all - an enormous waste of taxpayers' money”. The problem is so serious that shortly after coming into power the Coalition Government introduced the ICT Moratorium, under which any new ICT contracts, and, contract extensions/modifications above a value of £1m could not be entered into without the specific agreement by the Treasury (Ashurst, 2008, 370).

The waterfall model

There is no doubt that track records of IT projects are so dreadful. Until fairly recently virtually all IT projects have been managed to use the waterfall model. The waterfall model enshrines a sequential development process, in which development, seen as flowing steadily downwards like a waterfall through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction and testing. The output of each phase provides the input for the next stage. There are two very significant consequences of the waterfall model. Firstly, all of the requirements of the customer are specified before the project starts. However, this fetters the ability of the customer to respond to change and to exploit emergent opportunities over the course of the project. Secondly, the customer does not receive anything of tangible value until ...