A recent artical from Accountancy Age highlights a recent study by KPMG on IT Project Failures. There are some wonderful statistics quoted such as…

“KPMG International’s survey of 600 organisations across 22 countries revealed that 86% of respondents reported the loss of up to a quarter of their targeted benefits across their project portfolios.” “Nearly half of respondents reported at least one project failure in the past year…” “59% of organisations had no management process to measure benefits.”

Probably the most interesting quote mentioned is this one…

“Success is increasingly being defined as achieving the promised benefits, as opposed to the traditional focus on time and budget measures.”

While the article stresses a robust governance framework to reduce project failures, I would propose that a more focus around defining and delivering customer value incrementally will help lead to reduction in IT project failure.