Monday, December 17, 2007

IT Project Underperformance Accepted as the Norm by Global Business Management

One in 3 companies' IT projects fail to perform against expectations, research from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has revealed. Yet despite these worrying levels of failure to deliver, 43% of organizations say that their business managers and the Board accept problems as the norm. This attitude is especially common in Europe (44%) and AsiaPac (48%).

Despite the general poor performance of IT projects globally, such results do not evoke a sharp reaction from management. In fact, 69% of respondents said that their managers and the Board continued to provide the necessary financial support for these projects. Common problems cited included overrun on time (62%), budget (49%) and higher than expected maintenance costs (47%). In addition, 1 in 4 companies said that they find business users are reluctant to adopt the new systems once implemented.

As a result of the research, Tata Consultancy Services is urging businesses to re-think their IT services and outsourcing strategies. Organizations need to work with partners that can explain the value of their work at a Board level and provide Key Performance Indicators to show the benefit of the investments made.

In addition, they should work with businesses that can demonstrate a clear ability to execute on time, on budget and to plan.

More information on the service and support industry can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com.

2 comments:

Andrea Harris said...

This is a big problem for everybody.

Ade McCormack writes about this quite a bit in his FT column and new book, The IT Value Stack.

Ade McCormack said...

I agree. This is expectation management gone horribly wrong. There is some deep rot in the IT industry when users expect problems as part of the service.

In my view this isn’t (just) an IT department problem but one for the IT industry and user community.

Until we get users and technologists trusting each other and speaking the same language, this problem is set to continue.

I get into this in a big way in my new book - The IT Value Stack - A boardroom guide to IT leadership. More details can be found at my blog - The IT Value Stack.