IT projects are likely to exceed their cost and time estimatesStandish says that only 32% of projects deliver what they said on time and budgetThe most often quoted study into overruns and their causes is the Standish Group’s “CHAOS Report” which was first published in 1995. It was based on replies from 365 respondents, covering 8,380 projects worldwide. Since then they have been running the survey every year. They say that they now have over 50,000 projects in their database.The validity of the Standish reports has been disputed in recent years. Detractors argue that classifying something as an overrun is meaningless if the original estimates of cost, time and functionality were poor in the first place. This is, however, scant consolation for business people who use such estimates to justify projects in their business cases.
British Computer Society says that one in five projects overruns by 70%But Standish are not the only ones to have found such miserable performance. In 2008 The British Computer Society published the results of research that looked a 214 projects, covering the period 1998-2005, across a range of sectors within the European Union. The findings are summarised below.
Oxford University Business School says that 17% of projects have a cost overrun of 200%This bleak assessment is further supported by the most recent research. A huge study of 1,471 projects worldwide, was carried out by Oxford University’s Said Business School. The results were published in Harvard Business Review in September 2011 and stated that:
However one interprets the figures from these three studies, it is clear that IT projects often exceed their estimates. What is more, a significant proportion go very badly wrong. Here are three, of many, examples:
People are always over-optimistic about project successWe like to think that we are realistic about success. But actually, we are hard-wired towards optimism. The latest research from neuroscience and psychology shows that we all have bias towards unrealistic optimism, even when counter-evidence is present. IT projects are complex and difficult to estimate. This moved the academic, Douglas Hofstadter to formulate what has become known as: © All material on this site is protected by copyright - Gary Lloyd 2012 |