Project

How to prevent failure: project education

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  • Reading time:4 mins read

According to Standish Group, top causes of failed IT project are these:

  • lack of end-user engagement,
  • unclear specification,
  • changes in scope,
  • lack of management support,
  • lack of planning,
  • unrealistic and unclear goals.

I haven’t seen too many failed Microsoft Dynamics NAV implementation projects, but those that I did see fail, have failed precisely for a selection of these reasons.

Take a closer look at the list above. Doesn’t it seem that the blame lays mostly on the customer? But is it really customer’s fault?

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We don’t wear shoes, we use footwear!

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  • Reading time:8 mins read

(A short, almost pointless rant about PMBOK vs. Sure Step nonsense)

Once, while preparing an important RFP response, a partner told me they don’t use Sure Step because they use PMI methodology. This made my toenails curl up—when people tell me they are using PMI methodology, they in fact tell me they are using no methodology at all. It’s simple:

  1. There is no such thing as PMI methodology
  2. Anybody familiar with PMI should know that

Another time a partner told me they preferred PMBOK to Sure Step. Now, while this was a better argument, it was still very much wrong. As if they told me they don’t wear shoes, because they wear footwear.

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Business case – do I eat it or?

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  • Reading time:7 mins read

It’s a well known fact that IT projects fail every so often. Standish Group has been researching the success and failure factors of IT projects for a decade and a half, and they publish their results in their CHAOS report every two years or so. According to their 2006 report, only about 35% of projects can be categorized as successful, while 65% are declared unsuccessful. In this report, word unsuccessful can mean anything from exceeding time and/or budget (46% of projects) or failing altogether (19% of them). With such a huge proportion of projects going astray, maybe there was something wrong with these projects from the very beginning. Were the time and budget unrealistic? Were the project requirements, or even objectives, unrealistic? Maybe. Or maybe not. How can you tell?

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