How Much Does a Troubled IT Project Cost?
June 19, 2009 Leave a comment
Added costs, sure .. but it’s more than dollars. There are also human costs that are hard to estimate:
- Wear and tear on your employees; those working on the project, as well as those in the organizations into which the project is upgrading / integrating.
- Friction between managers, through escalations, downtime and defects.
- Added stress to YOU .. even if you’re not hands on, or in the line of fire.
What happens?
- Lack of QC at the project level.
- Project management that, well, doesn’t.
- Runaway scope (aka ‘feature creep’) or increasing complexity within projects.
What can you do?
- Focus on project management: this is critical to completing projects on time and within budget .. it’s important to spot (and early) if things are going wrong.
- Stress requirements and collecting use cases collection prior to cutting code.
- Engage your integration teams early in the project; ensure that your output reflects the required input for current systems and that your required inputs can be acquired without disrupting existing systems beyond reason.
Yes: I used to do big projects. Now, I just remember the good old days.
Baseline provides us a great look into challenges like these in “The Cost of Troubled IT Projects”.
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About Michael Coates