Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

A reader has written a trenchant response to an article on this blog about the failure of a project to manage the registration of markers of school exam papers, and the processing of marks into grades.

The reader's email is a reminder that the Office of Government Commerce's gateway review scheme was launched with the object of pre-empting high-profile IT-related disasters, particularly in central government.

It's likely the scheme has been successful in guaranteeing the success of some smaller and medium-sized projects and programmes. But there's been no cessation of major failures since the OGC began doing gateway reviews on risky IT and other projects.

A failure of the Gateway Review process?

A reader, Peter Duschinsky, writes with authority about why IT-related failures keep happening. He's responding to an article on the IT Projects blog which questioned whether Gateway Reviews are working.

"I just spotted your blog and your reader's response. I am not at all surprised at the SAT tests fiasco.

"OGC's Gateway review process doesn't deal adequately with the fundamental issue behind most of these failed or delayed projects: the high complexity of the project relative to the low capability of the organisation to manage its implementation. 

"After spending years as a change management consultant being frustrated at seeing so many modernisation and efficiency programmes failing to deliver the expected benefits, I started looking at the literature for some of the underlying causes - and found that I was not the only one to notice this problem, and it's not just in the public sector.