In an interesting article in the Sterling-Hoffman newsletter, Olin Thompson indicates that US corporations have changed their methods in buying software technology: “Buyers are skeptical of technology investments. Buyers remember late 90’s and early 2000’s when they heard a roar of outlandish vendor claims… Many software buyers recognize that the same people that were exaggerating software benefits with unsupported claims are many of the same people in the industry today, just working for different companies. Vendor claims are now met with a spoken or unspoken reaction of ‘Prove it!’”
He also notes that following statistics on software technology projects:
31% of IT projects are canceled before completion
53% of IT projects cost 189% of their original estimates
After reading the article, Chris Lininger commented that Mr. Thompson doesn’t have a complete picture: “IT is typically a barrier of incompetence that lies between business units and the vendors who can help them. CIOs should be scared. If IT orgs don’t learn how to get projects done, CEOs will learn how to outsource IT.”
LOL! Thanks for cleaning that up… 😀
Look at those numbers — how many companies would stay in business if they delivered like that to their customers? But somehow, since the ‘customer’ is an internal business unit, this lack of performance is tolerated.