14 Reasons IT projects fail

I found this article today, which, although IT project failures are a problem to business, still made me chuckle. As a member of a large (20 +) team of designers and developers, deadlines and project milestones are a subject close to my heart, and not always in a good way!

The following list is compiled from a CIO.com report, and I found it on Michael Krigson's blog on ZDNet. Read it and giggle...

Staffing Mistakes
1. Projects lack the right resources with the right skills.
2. Projects lack experienced project managers.

Process Mistakes
3. IT doesn’t follow a standard, repeatable project management process.
4. IT gets hamstrung by too much process.
5. They don’t track changes to the scope of the project.
6. They lack up-to-date data about the status of projects.
7. They ignore problems.

Planning Mistakes
8. They don’t take the time to define the scope of a project.
9. They fail to see the dependencies between projects.
10. They don’t consider Murphy’s Law.
11. They give short shrift to change management.
12. Project schedules are incomplete.

Communication Problems
13. IT doesn’t push back on unreasonable deadlines.
14. They don’t communicate well with project sponsors and stakeholders.

I noticed a couple of glaring ommisions, particularly:

1. Weak delegation. If you don't trust the judgement of those you delegate to, you should'nt be delegating to them in the first place.
2. Too many chiefs, not enough indians - Need I say more

These points all seem like common mistakes, but sometimes common sense is left on your project managers desk, while he/she is in a meeting to plan the next disaster!