The Almanac: Project Management
An eclectic collection of research and resources.
Computerworld - Failing to Learn From IT Mistakes
Examples of corporate IT project failures are well known, from AMR Corp.'s Confirm reservation system to Hershey Foods Corp.'s ERP meltdown. The reasons are well known, toofrom technology and financial shortcomings to a lack of end-user and management support. All of this is cataloged in the book Software Development Failures, by Kweku Ewusi-Mensah (MIT Press, 2003).
What's new is the author's examination of a subset of IT failures: abandoned projects. These are IT projects that were partially or completely abandoned before implementationoften in the coding/testing phase. In other words, they got pretty far along before someone figured out that they needed to pull the plug.
What's especially distressing is that IT organizations continue to make the same mistakes on subsequent projects. Most of them conduct post-mortem reviews to identify what went wrong and why, which is good news. But the author's research shows that half of them don't keep records of the lessons learned, and even those that do keep records don't make good use of them for new projects, so they're doomed to repeat past mistakes.
This book recommends a "triangulation strategy" for postabandonment reviews, using questionnaires, structured interviews and archived records to figure out why a project failed. But the most useful question of all may be, "What are the most important things you would point out to your manager or your staff if you joined a similar project in the future?"
Why Wait Until The Project Ends?
As good and important as retrospective project reviews are, they obviously come too late to do any good for an already completed (or abandoned) project. That's where "project introspectives" come in, says Lynne Nix, a senior consultant at Cutter Consortium in Arlington, Mass.
"The project introspective allows the project team to assess what is and is not working and to make midcourse corrections," Nix wrote in a recent bulletin. The goal is to revisit the original assumptions about features, resources and schedules, which undoubtedly have changed now that you have some real-world experience.

![]()
Three Tips
About: Program management offices (PMO)
From: Eric Gioia and Tricia Davis-Muffett, executives at Robbins-Gioia LLC, a project management consulting firm in Alexandria, Va.
Keep the PMO separate from the project development team so it can play an "honest broker" role and objectively point out problems. The PMO should report to the CIO.



- Excel 2010 Cheat Sheet
- Register for this Computerworld Insider Cheat Sheet and gain access to hundreds of premium content articles, guides, product reviews and more.
- Overcome Top 7 Admin Challenges of Active Directory
- As Active Directory's role in the enterprise has drastically increased, so has the need to secure the data. Gain insight on creating repeatable,...
- Insiders Can Ruin Your Company. Take Action.
- Did you know that 80 percent of threats to an organization come from the inside? The threat from insiders is often overlooked in...
- Top Solutions and Tools to Prevent Devastating Malware
- Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring...
- Streamline Compliance and Increase ROI
- Streamline, simplify, and automate compliance related activities; especially those that impact multiple business units. This white paper from NetIQ, outlines solutions that will...
- X-Ray of the PCI Process-4 Proactive Steps
- This white paper from Forrester Research Inc., helps break PCI into understandable components. Security and risk professionals will gain knowledge and insight into... All Project Management White Papers
- Optimizing Networks for the Cloud
- Join guest speaker, Rohit Mehra, IDC Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, to explore current trends, discuss best practices for optimizing Data Center and...
- Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere
- Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as...
- Apps QuickStart Series Part 1: Designing and Deploying Exchange 2010 on VMware vSphere
- Download this webcast to learn the virtual hardware design considerations for Exchange 2010, deployment using the building block approach, options for high-availability and...
- Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware
- Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn...
- Virtualize Business-Critical Applications with Confidence
- Virtualizing business-critical applications has become a key focus for organizations as they move along their virtualization journey. With the launch of VMware vSphere®... All Project Management Webcasts