Toronto Star: IT projects are ticking time bombs

Ambitious IT projects are ticking time bombs that can bring down corporations if they’re not carefully managed to come in on time and on budget, warns a study in the Harvard Business Review.

The Oxford University researchers examined 1,471 information technology projects, in private and public sectors, comparing budgets and estimated performance benefits with actual costs and results.

They had expected to find IT projects incur large average cost overruns, but they were surprised to see fully one in six projects — nearly 17 per cent — were so mismanaged that they had average cost overruns of 200 per cent, not factoring inflation, and delays of 70 per cent.

Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford’s Said Business School said in an interview he was shocked at how many large, multi-year projects can easily go off the rails.

More of the Toronto Star article from Vanessa Lu

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.