Management Toolkit

One in three IT projects exceeds budget

Bupesh Jain silicon.com

Published: 13 Sep 2007 08:56 BST

A third of IT projects carried out in the private sector runs over budget, according to a survey.

One in three projects implemented each year ends up with an overspend of between 10 and 20 percent on the original budget. And one in four projects costs 50 percent more than it was expected to, according to a survey of 100 chief information officers.

The survey also found the typical large company is running 29 projects at any one time.

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According to the research, sponsored by software management company CA, the main reasons for overspending include poor forecasting, increases in project scope, and issues of interdependencies and conflicts between multiple projects.

It said this isn't helped by the lack of visibility and control chief information officers have over their project portfolios — 39 percent of IT directors do not have clear visibility of projects and so do not know when they are close to running over budget.

CA said the survey shows chief information officers are still principally being judged on whether they deliver within budget rather than whether they deliver strategic value to the business.

Staffing is also an issue, with highly skilled workers being assigned tasks off-the-cuff rather than being strategically placed where they would be most effective, according to the survey.