Miles Jennings - Blog

Why CIOs May Not Complete IT Projects - Miles Jennings

Written by Miles Jennings | Dec 5, 2013 11:27:56 AM

With innovative solutions continuously being released to the market, chief information officers may feel as if they always had a project on their plate.Even though businesses’ information technology departments may decide to take on initiatives to implement new tools throughout their companies, they do not necessarily have the management or budgetary resources to see these endeavors to the end. In fact, some findings have shown that CIOs may be overly ambitious when it comes to carrying out projects, having a significant proportion of IT professionals falling short on delivering a finished product.IT project failures increaseAccording to a recent release, tech portfolio management firm Innotas revealed that 50 percent of polled IT executives stated that they had had an initiative fail in the last year. With half of the surveyed professionals encountering issues with successfully executing an endeavor, there could be reason for CIOs to investigate the reasons as to why things are going wrong.In that same survey, 74 percent of respondents cited a lack of resources to properly manage the projects that they have undertaken. Most notably, these professionals felt that a shortfall in terms of staff size left them without an adequate amount of manpower to get the job done.”The high percentage of projects that failed over the last year, and the lack of resources dedicated to project management, shows that many organizations have not yet embraced an approach that enables project success,” Kevin Kern, CEO of Innotas, stated.Why initiatives failOn top of the resource shortage, IT executives found that there were other factors that played a role in the downfall of their endeavors. These elements mainly pertain to insufficient strategizing, including incorrect budgeting and improper prioritization.CIO.com proposed other possible components that could have contributed to tech venture failures. Some industry experts that the root of the problem may lie in the role of IT project managers.CIOs and upper-level tech professionals are put under a lot more pressure these days. Because IT appears to be infiltrating various new aspects of business operations, the job descriptions for employees handling these solutions seem to be growing longer and more complex.Despite the refined skills that a number of IT staff members possess within their field, the business world could be asking more and more of them. Not only must tech professionals be savvy in terms of taming the latest innovations and applying them to their companies’ functions, but they also have to branch out of their own departments and display additional competencies.CIOs tackle interdepartmental workBecause of this rising trend, the projects that CIOs have to complete are no longer limited to the confines of their departments. They will have to manage their own staff members, in addition to employees who work in different divisions of their organizations.This presents tech managers with a number of hurdles that they have to overcome to effectively execute whatever initiative they have on the docket. Because every department performs separate tasks and follow distinct protocol, IT executives will have to delegate and coordinate tasks in unfamiliar territory.They also have to find a way to communicate any progress or problems that their companies are encountering over the course of a project. Accomplishing this can be tricky, as representatives who perform roles unrelated to IT have varying levels of knowledge regarding technology. Consequently, ensuring that everyone is on the same page about developments made in an initiative can be challenging.When CIOs have to collaborate with other business executives, these complications increase exponentially. CIO Australia explained that with numerous professionals working together on a single initiative, a project can become disjointed from the get-go.Every executive tends to approach an endeavor with specific goals in mind. Professionals want to make sure that projects will benefit their departments, causing them to come to the table with goals in mind.As a result, the process of completing a venture can sometimes be filled instances when they do not see eye-to-eye. With everyone vying to do what is best for their divisions, CIOs attempting to adopt new solutions to improve their businesses as a whole are left to make crucial project decisions on their own.