The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Hewlett-Packard
conducted an investigation into the delivery of large scale IT
projects. It found that Europeans felt secure in their jobs
regardless of delivery performance, whereas workers in the US and
Asia felt less secure.
In Europe, 51% of IT professionals said that the late delivery
of projects would not pose a threat to their continued employment.
In Asia that figure was 33% but in the US it was 22%.
Large IT projects are notorious for slipping well past time and
budget targets, and the survey indicates that a lack of
accountability and worker complacency could be a factor.
"This shows the lack of accountability of IT departments in
delivering business results," said David Quantrell, vice president
of HP Software in Europe.
The survey asked IT workers what the causes of delays most often
were. The top three most common delays were outsourcing, a change
in management priorities midway through a project, and poor
co-ordination between managers.
Amongst the European nations, the place most likely to have
projects completed on time was Sweden. There, 44% of IT workers
were able to say that all of their IT projects had been finished on
time in the last three years.
No other European country was even able to say that a quarter of
projects had been completed on deadline. The next most punctual
nation was Switzerland with 24% of IT workers saying their projects
finished on time. In the UK only 11% of workers could say that,
placing it sixth in the European league table.
The survey of 1,125 IT workers found that the consequences of
late projects were late delivery of new products and the loss of
the predicted revenue from those products.
“In business, speed is increasingly of the essence. It is cause
for alarm then that so many of those surveyed deliver IT projects
late,” said Denis McCauley, director of global technology research
at the EIU. “Companies that succeed in accelerating IT project and
service delivery have a significant advantage, while those that do
not may suffer at the hand of the competition.”
