On Project Success Factors – How Successful are ICT Projects?

Before I enter into more detail on the factors I perceive as contributing to project success, let’s take a look at how ICT Project are actually doing, now. A quick google leads to me to the Ernst & Young report “Trends in ICT 2007” (Dutch only, I apologize).

http://www.centric.nl/index.asp?nmoduleid=3&spagetype=6&nCHType=1&sPath=/Trends_in_ICT_2007.pdf

The image they present is shocking. In the figure below the red bar shows the percentage of projects that are successful for several project types.

The report defines an unsuccessful project as a project that does not meet its expectations, is not delivered within Time & Budget or one that falls flat due to major technological or organizational problems. Most organizations seek the cause of failure with themselves, by the way: only 4% of respondents report to having issues with their suppliers.

You can also see that the chance of success declines rapidly when the impact on the organization grows. You have a 71% chance of success when doing a system migration and only 24% when implementing a CRM system. By the way: we will be taking on the 23% odds when implementing a project and planning system shortly, by implementing this at AMIS. We’ll keep you informed! Of course we already knew that ICT Projects with a lot of impact on the organization are not just ICT projects, right? And ICT Projects that matter tend to have that impact, don’t they?

Given these lousy success scores we don’t seem to remember that, or at least not act on that enough. So be aware and stay aware – your project is not just an ICT Project (or your project doesn’t matter).