unCubeme

According to a survey that software management company Computer Associates gave, they concluded that a third of IT projects exceed budget. If you have ever worked in an IT department (Not IT Company) this should not seem new to you, heck I think the number is a little low. This article from Cnet talks about the normal culpriates for this problem. First big problem is “Scope Creeping”, this always happens during the Software Development Life Cycle. The “clients” which can be internal or external ask for more features than what was originally asked. Sometimes these features can cause a huge overhaul of the project ofcourse taking time which adds to the budget. This problem then relates to bad planning or bad forecasting. If not planned correctly then scope creep can occur easily because design was not solid enough. Also, I like to say that thinking about a project in high level terms will cause the designer to not understand the complexities that development will incurr duing the SDLC. Other than these typical factors there are a few factors I would point the finger at. First of which the article talks about is that the CIO is principally judged on whether they finish projects under-budget. So all the way down the food chain the emphasis is keep to budget even if it means releasing crappy results. I just left a highly recognizable company in which I felt this was the problem with their IT department. If they would realize if they spent just a little more on development of a project then in return they would not have to spend future money on bug fixes and enhancements. This hits my pet peave with the technology world mixing with the business world. I believe there are too many non-technological people running these projects, and this is good and bad. The good meaning they are getting the business objectives completed but bad because they don’t fully understand the complexity of the project. I just can’t fully express how frustrating some projects I have been on where deadlines where created and I could not fathom how the possibly create those dates because completing them would be short of a mireacle. One final reason I would like to point out that the article hits on is that the Staff is not the problem but more or less how they are assigned to a project. I felt like that happened to me. I was assigned to a project that was in a field I knew little about and I never understood why wasn’t I utilized to my potential to have a bigger impact on the company. Well you can’t disagree with me that IT projects are never as easy as they seem. There is just too many factors to get around to finish projects within budget. Of course these are my opinions but leave a comment if you would like to make other points.