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#Management

Assessing IT Project Success: Perception vs. Reality (Category Management)

#Management #Processes #Leadership #Project #Product

This article, published in ACM Queue in September, examines how our understanding of IT-project success is changing. Standish Group heavily promoted this topic as far back as its 1994 “CHAOS Report,” arguing that most IT projects fail. Its definition concerned project-management success, specifically the schedule, budget and scope triangle:

The project is completed on time and on budget, with all features and functions as initially specified.

The new study’s authors asked what other objective indicators could help assess success. They chose:

  • Overall success achieved.
  • Compliance with scope, time and cost.
  • Vendor or supplier satisfaction.
  • Client satisfaction.
  • The impact of deliverables.
  • Verified realization of project benefits.

They surveyed experienced IT-project managers across industries and regions. Each respondent assessed a recently completed project using a detailed questionnaire with subjective ratings and objective criteria, answered on a Likert scale. Around 200 questionnaires were completed. Projects had to have finished more than six months earlier, allowing questions about:

  • Whether the client used the results after completion.
  • Whether the client hired specialists to support or maintain the project.
  • Whether the client signed new contracts with the same supplier.
  • Whether the client recommended that supplier to others.

The main finding challenges the familiar narrative of frequent IT-project failure, including that of Standish’s CHAOS reports: most projects in the study achieved a high level of success. Specifically, 90.16% scored above the midpoint on overall success, and 61.66% reached the top two levels. The broader criteria also indicated high success rates. Overall success correlated positively with client satisfaction (ρ = 0.714), client benefits (ρ = 0.751) and supplier satisfaction (ρ = 0.653), highlighting client outcomes as a key indicator.

For future research, the authors recommend including more stakeholder perspectives, such as end users and sponsors, to get a fuller picture. For practitioners, they recommend assessing long-term outcomes, including client satisfaction and business benefits, alongside project-execution measures. This should help organizations understand and improve project management. I read it as an argument for a product approach: a project often creates a product or changes an existing one, and its long-term outcome is that product’s success :)

Overall, this is a more comprehensive view of IT-project success than Standish Group’s rhetoric. It shows that many projects achieve substantial success when evaluated broadly, challenging outdated assumptions of near-universal failure. Assessment frameworks need to reflect the many dimensions of modern IT projects :)

#Management #Processes #Leadership #Project #Product