People make projects, not just the software

All professions are conspiracies against the laity, said journalist, playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw.

It's a quote that nicely sums up the difficulties that big IT projects often run into, says Wellington software company Equinox's service delivery manager, Paul Ramsay.

Ramsay was reacting to assertions claims by Borland Australia and New Zealand sales director Chris Gray that New Zealand had a worse software project record than the US and that Borland's project management tool - Core SDP - could reduce the failure rate.

Gray cited a study from the Massachusetts-based Standish Group that recorded two-thirds of US software projects as failures.

But Ramsay said it was disingenuous of Gray to suggest that a piece of software would solve IT project problems.

Tools such as Core SDP definitely had a role to play but they were not the whole answer, said Ramsay.

"What makes a project a success or failure is a combination of factors.

"The fundamental line that we have is that the focus is on the people - they make it succeed or fail."

He cites the example of the notorious Incis IT project for the police.

A reading of the Incis report showed many of the reasons for failure were to do with personal conflicts and communications issues between the key players, said Ramsay.

Often companies did not bring the same rigour to managing IT projects that they did to other parts of the business. But attitudes were changing.

"Businesses are becoming more actively involved and critical about investment in IT."

Ramsay also takes issue with the Standish Group report, quoted by Gray.

"It gets quoted in virtually every vendor presentation about project failure," he said.

But it came down to how failure was defined.

Often successful projects were classed as failures if there were cost or time over-runs, he said.

"People need to look at project success and failure in terms of more than just time and money.

"Clearly in the New Zealand market there have and will continue to be examples of project failure but I don't think it's any worse than in the US."

An April 2000 report commissioned by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and done by the Institute for Economic Research and the Simpl Group backs up Ramsay's view.

The report's purpose was to assess whether there was some systemic problem in managing IT projects in the public sector.

It concluded that the public sector appeared to be meeting international and local performance standards in terms of managing IT projects.

"There is little support for the notion that there is any systemic problem associated particularly with New Zealand public sector IT management," the report said.

"Moreover, while the results indicate that there remains significant potential to improve IT project outcomes in the New Zealand public sector, this is equally the case with IT projects in the US and in the New Zealand private sector."