In this post, you will quickly learn about why IT Projects fail. This type of information can be useful in your next planning meeting for retrospective at work!
Roughly about 68% of all IT projects fail. Listed below are 8 reasons why IT projects fail:
- Failure to understand what results the project needs to meet for the organization
- Failure to establish a governance structure for the needs of the project
- Failure to identify or engage stakeholders
- Lack of clear roles and responsibilities for team mates.
- Lack of formality in the scope and definition process resulting in people having different understandings of the scope.
- Estimates are provided without a statement of scope.
- Failure to take account non functional requirements when designing a product system or process.
- Poor requirements analysis, meaning projects are doomed right from the start.
Poor requirements analysis lead many projects down the wrong path. The impact of the skills gap is substantial and increasing time, scope and cost. The solution lies in recognizing that requirements are critical. Learn to make assumptions explicit. Write down all requirements, expand the requirement into a set of features, share the features with the business to get feedback and rinse lather/repeat until the technical team and business are on the same page. Solid requirements planning establish a clear connect between the business case, project goals and the project outcome.
Do any look familiar to you? If so, get to turning it around!