Your IT, Digital, AI, Cloud Project is...
...Likely Going To Fail.
Strategy Control Room Advanced members can access the new IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center-of-Excellence here. Full article and all associated exhibits can be viewed here: https://firmsconsulting.com/it-digital-ai-cloud/
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You do not want to hear this, especially if you're knee-deep in an IT project. If you have spent more than a year speaking to IT experts and meticulously planning your project and about forty percent into delivering the project, this is the last thing you want to hear.
Yet, you need to hear this.
IT projects have the worst track record of any project, including those notoriously delayed defense contracts you read about in the news. IT projects are frequently over budget, behind schedule, and fail to deliver what they promised (outcomes). This poor performance is typical across industries, regions, and types of IT projects. This is a finding across several consulting firms, universities that study projects, and our own experience with clients.
You can ignore this Center of Excellence (CoE), assume your project will be the exception, and plow ahead, but chances are you'll become another failed IT statistic.
Or you can learn from this IT, Digital, AI, Cloud Center-of-Excellence.
It is far better to do the work today to either fix your IT project or plan for the next IT project. The reality is that all of us, at some point or another, will be a part of or impacted by some IT project.
The findings in this CoE broadly apply across all projects, and we will, at times, use non-IT examples to explain some concepts.
Across all the IT projects we have managed, advised on, or reviewed, we have distilled the insights on what makes a successful IT project. These insights come from years of working with clients, including digital transformation efforts and large-scale AI implementations.
This includes our significantly more extensive archive of projects than what members have seen within Insider, Legacy, or SCRA over the last 15 years. We have yet to publish those to StrategyTraining.com and SCRA. As you can see from all our updates, this is an ongoing process. We hold the largest available repository of management consulting analyses, tools, toolkits, methodologies, proposals and studies, and sales techniques, and it keeps growing.
Those IT project related insights have been condensed into a single ~168-page internal guide we use when advising on IT projects. We hand this internal document to our teams, and we are now making it available to you.
We're releasing the first two sections for the SCRA members and will continue to share more over the next month.
The Hidden Reason IT Projects Fail
There's a subtle, powerful reason most IT projects fail. And it's not what you think.
It has nothing to do with budgets, timelines, vendors, or technology. It's rooted in how decisions are made and defended inside organizations. It's about the psychology of teams under stress.
You won't find this insight in traditional project management literature, but it has played a decisive role in nearly every IT failure we've seen. It's part of the unique insights we make available only to our clients and members.
It's one of the most important ideas we've uncovered, and we walk through it in detail in the CoE. Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and you'll start to recognize it everywhere.
If your project is already underway, this one blind spot may become the reason it quietly derails.
We explain exactly how this works and how to fix it in the complete IT, Digital, AI, Cloud Center-of-Excellence.
Case Studies: Why IT Projects Fail
The IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center of Excellence also outlines the best-practice guidelines for IT projects (and any project, whether you are building a road or an airport, since the principles are the same).
We have included detailed case studies explaining why specific projects failed and how they deviated from best practices.
We follow the advice we always offer to management consultants and industry leaders.
Never go broad in a case study unless there is a clear reason for doing so.
Find the one issue that needs to be studied rather than analyzing an entire company, which is practically impossible and yields little useful information.
Case-study specific failures versus broad successes.
Failures teach more than successes.
We cannot know what was successful when the project is just completed due to the hidden reason IT projects fail. We cover this in detail in this CoE.
The full article and associated exhibits can be viewed here: https://firmsconsulting.com/it-digital-ai-cloud/
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Enroll for SCRA here.
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If you're an SCRA member, the IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center of Excellence is now available here.
Not a member yet? Enroll here: strategytraining.com/pages/scr and select Strategy Control Room Advanced.
We care about your success. Feel free to reach out with questions at team@firmsconsulting.com.
Thank you for being part of the StrategyTraining community.