July 23, 2009, 6:23 AM — Large, mission-critical projects demand more than effective project management skills to ensure the project success. Project leadership plays vitally important role in meeting established goals and objectives.
Factual and anecdotal evidence confirms that IT investments are inherently risky. On average, about 70% of all IT related projects fail to meet their on-time, on-budget objectives or to produce the expected business results. In one KPMG survey, 67% of the companies who participated said that their program/project management function was in need of improvement. Why? A number of leading factors for project failure were suggested by the survey, including the "usual suspects": unreasonable project timelines, poorly defined requirements, poor scope management, and unclear project objectives. Granted, all of these factors can play a role in project success. But are they the cause or project failure, or just a symptom of some larger issue?
The article by Dr. Karen McGraw discusses that the root cause for many of these common failure points is really the ability to lead projects, not just manage them. The full article by Dr. Karen McGraw is available [here].
