Companies leaving major projects up to chance

European companies are leaving the running of major IT projects to chance, with little effective thought or planning going on before or after the event.

As a result only 18 per cent of companies working on in-house software development projects say their projects run to time and to budget. Furthermore, a staggering 80 per cent of companies said at least one in 10 projects ends up being shelved, according to research from software company Borland.

The research also revealed that a massive 75 per cent of companies have no process in place to examine the reasons behind project failure.

Chris Purrington, UK MD at Borland, told silicon.com: "For all projects it is important to understand why they turn out the way they do - especially if it has run over time or over budget."

Purrington accepted that many companies have come to regard projects running over time and over budget with a "that's life" attitude, though he added "but that doesn't make it right".

"People have come to accept that this is the case," he said. "But projects shouldn't be running over time or over budget, and if they do then companies need to have the processes in place to work out why."

However, the findings seem to suggest that projects are not necessarily running late or breaking the budget because of failures in deployment. It seems more likely that it is poor planning before the deployment which means timescale and budget are often woefully inaccurate.

The most common reasons for projects running into trouble were constantly changing requirements, cited by 36 per cent of respondents and badly defined requirements (31 per cent).

Purrington advised companies to use a formalised development process hosted in an integrated environment - to ensure everybody is 'singing from the same hymn sheet.

He cited instances of companies exchanging Word documents and spreadsheets internally, with changes being added at all stages, resulting in various versions of the documents, with varying degrees of inconsistency, in circulation.

"Companies need to have a system in place where people are viewing the same information all the way down the path," he said.