Connected to Books Reviews Authors: Project Management: Failed IT Project Business Cases by Natalie Disque

Project Management: Failed IT Project Business Cases: A Career Guide to Lessons Learned by Natalie Disque, PMP

Do you want to know how to prevent IT projects that have failed due to reasons that could have been prevented? What is a Project Manager? It is to deliver and do so in a way that benefits the sponsor and lives up to their expectations such as; progress, cost, quality, performance, cash flow, safety, health & environmental standards, regulatory, reporting and risk to name a few of the obvious. This book by Natalie will tell you by her experience why Project Managers have failed and why and then it will prove that all of them could have been prevented from failure. It makes me wonder why the Project Managers are not improving their skills by learning how to proactively take charge of a project, communicate better and then lead the project team to a complete success. After ten years of research Natalie has decided to focus her book on the IT industry. This is a book that existing and future Project Managers will need to read and learn the lessons she did to take preventative measures in their own projects and helps businesses from failing in the future. We all learn from our mistakes. People want "instant gratification" and want the product and services faster and cheaper than the competition. In the future supply and demand for Project Managers, the IT industry will not suffer in the area of employment. With technology changing at the speed of lightening all around the world. What I learned to be of most value to myself as a Technical Manager Degree master is that J.P. Morgan Chase & Company in 2012 had its biggest failure due to an Excel spreadsheet with formula's that miscalculated market advice with incorrect calculations copied over throughout the spreadsheets and if the Chief Investment Officer was more careful the person would of verified the calculations and instead did not and the project produced a loss in trades around six billion. Since then the failure has now lead to wide spread improvements across the board.

Most common reasons Projects Fail:

System and user requirements which means their needs to be adequate and Clear requirement so the project will not fail as in the past.

The Gap is another one, which means that the IT system’s requirements and what is expected of it needs to be a priority.

Non-compliance which mean that Project managers need to know the current laws in order for it to not fail. The laws needs to be laid out so the company will really know what it is getting into so that no legal troubles come down the road to cost more money for the business.

Failing to consider integration which involves analyzing the project from an enterprise level. This means that Project manager need to take into consideration how the IT project will work with important business processes. Most important businesses need to consider how well the program it uses if it will work with the project a whole and keep it running smoothly as a whole from start to finish.

Not bringing in experts, think about it the experts are needed when coming up with an IT program's requirements, time needs to be taken with designing a system's projects. The only solution is to bring in Subject Matter experts.

Looking for a problem which for an IT project to be a success the requirements need to solve a problem that businesses and companies have in the first place which is cost effective. The solution is that stakeholders of an IT project need to know what problems need to be solves so they can cater their product to those specific issues.

Drifting is when the requirements simply do not go with the business case, and IT project can be going the wrong direction. Keeping projects on tract at whatever the cost needs to be the goal.

Architecture is controlled by Requirements which means that this can slow down an IT project. The requirements will do its job and tell what the architecture will need in order for the project to become successful.

Misguided priorities which means that a company’s priorities need to be accurate for the success of an IT project. In conclusion to help the failure of IT projects there are things that can be done to help the company to either lessen the impact or failure of the project. This means that the committee should be led by a senior business executive who does not serve also as the chief information officer but also includes senior staff members whose occupations are from areas or lines of business that would be affected by the system created, if not the business changes should delivered in such a way that meets expected benefits.