Should you euthanize your project?

Computerworld - You probably haven't thought about inviting Dr. Kevorkian to one of your project meetings, but maybe you should. Although you might not want to join Kevorkian's well-publicized crusade to legalize physician-assisted suicide, he has some very valuable lessons to teach us about delivering successful IT projects.
As IT professionals, we frequently find ourselves desperately trying to keep dying projects alive when we should perhaps consider whether to help them die gracefully. My version of the good doctor's position is the counterintuitive idea of "rush to failure." If your project is going to fail anyway, kill it after spending only $10,000 rather than $10 million.
Why Rush to Failure?
There's a dirty little secret in the IT world: We've got an absolutely abysmal track record when it comes to delivering projects. According to a recent study done by The Standish Group International Inc., 28% of software development projects are canceled without ever delivering anything, and another 46% of these projects eventually deliver late or over budget. Combined, that means that three quarters of development projects can be classified as failing at some level.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. According to Gartner Inc., about 80% of projects will fail to meet major business objectives or will meet them only with extra effort from the vendor, client or both. Gartner even recommends using this as a fundamental assumption for strategic planning. (An assumption? It's more like an indictment!)
Given that this is the current state of the art in IT projects, we can either continue to assume that all projects are worth saving or we can consider Kevorkian's example.
Proactive Risk Management
Of course, the hard part is identifying which projects to kill and when. It won't be apparent from looking at the traditional project management tools such as schedules, task lists, budgets, Gantt charts, Pert charts or resource lists. A missed milestone or a late task isn't sufficient information to take wise action. The only project management tool that can be helpful in identifying the proper course of action is also the least used of all tools: risk management.
Proactive risk management refers to the constant identification of and planning for project threats. Among the popular project management tools, risk management occupies a unique position. It's the only tool designed to deal with the complexity of reality.
Standard project management tools are designed to help make assumptions and estimates about the unknowable reality of a project. They help simplify reality to make it manageable, but in doing so, they lose much of the