SE-Radio Epislode 250: Jürgen Laartz and Alexander Budzier on Why Large IT Projects Fail


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Feb 22 2016 43 mins   391
Alex Budzier of the Oxford Saïd Business School and Jürgen Laartz of McKinsey Berlin join Robert Blumen to discuss their research on large IT project failures. The show covers: What is a "large" project? What is the definition of failure? Cognitive biases and project failures. Are some attributes of projects predictive of failure? The catastrophic “black swan” failure mode. How do projects spin so badly out of control? What are the warning signs that a project is going into a black swan mode? Why are massively late and over-budget projects not cancelled? Are mission-critical “bet the business” projects more likely to end badly? Can costs be accurately estimated in advance? The role of cynical political calculations in cost overruns. Can projects be estimated bottom up or are historical methods more accurate? Are unclear requirements responsible for failures? Do agile practices work at scale? And finally, how can companies succeed in critical projects? Venue: Internet Related Links Alexander Budzier’s home page at the Saïd School https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/alexander-budzier Research on IT projects and Risk at the Said School McKinsey Quarterly http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mckinsey_quarterly McKinsey Business Technology portal http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/delivering_large-scale_it_projects_on_time_on_budget_and_on_value Why IT projects really fail http://www.cio.com.au/article/533532/why_it_projects_really_fail/ Why Good Projects Fail Anyway https://hbr.org/2003/09/why-good-projects-fail-anyway Why do IT projects fail? http://economia.icaew.com/business/january-2015/it-failures Why software fails http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/why-software-fails A Reflection on Why Large Public Projects Fail by Kjetil Holgeid and Mark Thompson https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/programmes/emba/downloads/A_Reflection_on_Why_Large_Public_IT_Projects_Fail_-_Kjetil__Mark_Thompson_s_chapter.pdf Alexander Budzier at Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DzngGSwAAAAJ&hl=en