I have often spoken and written of my positive experience as Project Manager of a project in Hawaii. Little compares to the joy and sadness I felt as we completed the project and began the closing process. Joy because we had successfully delivered a new system that would serve the client organization’s customers for years…

I started writing this series of articles 52 weeks ago. I asked the following questions: Why does IT have such a mediocre (read “dismal”) project delivery track record, especially given that we’re so skilled at technology and process? How can we improve our success rates? Are we focusing on the people aspects of our project…

As I reviewed published materials on the state of the IT industry’s ability to deliver projects successfully, it struck me that project success and failure have different meanings to different people. Two of the more recent studies that I reviewed were from the Project Management Institute and the Standish Group. (For more information from these…

We bid a fair price. Of course, it helped that we were the incumbent. The Request for Proposal was for three years of maintenance and operations (M&O) services. Not only were we the incumbent of the expiring M&O project, but we were also the developers of the original system now under M&O. We were awarded…