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A recent IDC survey of 144 IT managers reveals that over the past 18 months, companies on average have managed close to three significant IT projects. With IDC forecasting the IT hardware and packaged software markets to grow by 6.7% in 2006 to $692 billion, it is evident that CIOs will continue to make sizeable investments in company infrastructure and software over the next year. For IT managers, these ongoing investments mean they can expect to continue to oversee IT projects of varying scope and complexity in the coming months.
The goal for IT managers is to ensure that these projects are completed successfully and support company objectives. But how does one define success? For the purposes of this study, IT projects were considered successful if respondents indicated they achieved most of the following metrics:
- The project met its stated objectives
- The project was delivered within budget
- The project was delivered in a timely fashion
- The project met internal specifications
- The project met stakeholder objectives
As Figure 1 shows, IT projects still hold a risk of failure. Overall, only 75% of projects met most of the project objectives.
According to IDC’s survey, operating system upgrade, shared print services, and service/help desk and operating system migration are low risk. Business and disaster recovery planning projects only met most of their objectives half the time. Higher risk projects tend to be those where IT organizations do not have the embedded skills necessary to effectively carry out the project plan. These projects tend to be around "newer" solutions or techniques ó such as server virtualization, high-availability infrastructure, and even IT consolidation. For projects where the process is both well defined and team experience is relatively high, the success ratio is correspondingly higher and the overall project risk is significantly lower. These projects include enduser system deployment, operating system migrations and installation of service or help desks.
However, there is a single, concrete step project managers can take to increase the success of all of their projects: increase team skill. By assuring the project team is properly skilled prior to beginning a complex project, IT managers can dramatically reduce the risk of project failure, decrease project cost, and increase project effectiveness, especially in high-risk projects.
IDC research suggests two important variables that IT managers can leverage to increase project success: the amount of training provided to project teams and the overall skill level of project teams. IDC has found a strong correlation between both variables and the outcome of a project.
Training Breeds Skill, Skill Becomes Success
IDC’s study of 377 IT projects found that, on average, projects that met most or all of their objectives provided each project team member with twice the amount of training as those projects that achieved little or partial success.
Similarly, IDC found a strong correlation between team skill level and the number of training hours the project team received. On average, teams that received 20 hours of training per team member to prepare for a project were twice as capable as those teams that only received 10 hours of training.
Completing the relationship between training, skill level, and project success, IDC’s study also revealed a strong link between an IT project team’s assessed skill level and its success. Findings from IDC’s study reveal that the average skill level of teams whose projects met all objectives were significantly higher than those project teams that achieved partial or little success (see Figure 2). In simple terms, skilled teams succeed more often.
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