Fewer than half of IT projects have intended, positive
business outcomes, according to a survey of IT decision makers
conducted by the Economist Business
Unit.
The research, which questioned 1125 IT decision makers and was
sponsored by
HP, also found that the main reason for
failure of IT projects to deliver business benefits was that
demand was outstripping the IT department's ability to deliver.
The survey said that speed of project delivery was driving
company profits, yet a quarter of projects ran late. In 63% of
projects, respondents said they would reduce the scope of the
project if a project was behind schedule. And 31% said they would
reduce quality and performance testing to prevent a delay and 45%
said they would increase their budget.
Significantly, 40% of UK users admitted that
outsourcing was one of the reasons for project delays.
According to Dave Clarke, presales business consulting manager at
HP, "Outsourcing generates a trade-off between efficiency and
agility. The ability to change quickly is more important. When you
are outsourcing, you lose the ability to change quickly."
Clarke believes businesses may have outsourced too much, and
have no spare resources to throw at a project if it was running
behind schedule.
HP provides software to help CIOs and IT directors manage the
software development lifecycle. One user of the HP software is
Vodafone. Speaking of the importance of software-development
lifecycle management, Ian Ravenscoft, head of IT operations at
Vodafone UK, said, "You can only spend money once to deliver an IT
project. You have to get it right. You must really understand the
benefit between business and the customer."
As an example, he said that in the development of Vodafone's
self-service systems, "We have been focussed on looking at how our
customers will use our systems."
He urged IT directors and CIOs to build system that can scale
and be provisioned very quickly.
HP's strategy through its $4.5 billion acquisition of Mercury in
2006 is to provide CIOs and IT directors with a suite of tools
to support the software development lifecycle. Last week HP
introduced software to help users capture project requirements. It
also expanded its range of testing tools with testing accelerators
for testing SAP and
Web 2.0 applications and a new product to help users run risk
based testing of software projects.
The company is also acquiring SPI Dynamics, a company
specialising in providing users with risk assessment across the
lifespan of their software development project.
Economist Business Unit site
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