Tony Collins's IT Projects Blog

An unpleasant side-effect of media coverage of IT-related project failures is that people have come to expect a decline in an organisation's service at and after the installation of a large system.

Failure has become acceptable, in the same way as the public has become accustomed to lost information about them on CDs, memory sticks and laptops.

Below is an email from the well-meaning and energetic Chief Executive of Somerset County Council, Alan Jones, who writes to staff a week after the go-live of a SAP system on 1 April 2009. Jones refers to "weeks of turbulence".

Too many government projects have become politicized says David Tidey, Assistant Chief Executive at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and chairman of the BCS Elite group of IT directors and senior mangers.

"We have got to get better at delivering IT," he said. "There are so many horror stories out there. If you just look at some of the government projects, half of the problem is that [they have become] too political.... they are not about delivering something that's very clear. Someone wants to make statements, do something for the wrong reasons."

Interesting survey  

And this