What is Different About IT Risks?

DATE: October 17, 2002

PLACE: Rideau Room, Sheraton Hotel, 150 Albert Street

SPEAKERS: Glyn Jones

Many organizations have tried to improve the performance of IT development projects by analyzing and researching the causes of failure that have been, and still are, being experienced. This has led to some well known initiatives including the Software Engineering Institute, the Software Program Managers Network and others. These provide excellent advice and prescriptions on what are recommended as software development Best Practices, and have shown how the application of mature management and development practices, including risk management, can lead to increased likelihood of a successful project.

But IT projects still get into difficulties, fail to meet expectations, and are cancelled.

This presentation offers, from a background of practical risk management in many medium to large IT development projects, some pithy observations from the trenches on what continues to go wrong. In particular, what is it about IT projects that continues to generate these high risk projects. In a nutshell, despite the excellent prescriptions for success available from many sources, in too many development sites the prescribed regimen is being ignored, lifestyles haven't changed, and so the outcomes haven't changed.