IT Success!: Towards a New Model for Information Technology

Why this book

I have been in the IT profession for over 25 years, during which time the industry has gone through one of the most rapid paces of technological change in its history – one could almost say in history, period. Today, systems are more often bought than built, and IT project cycles are measured in months rather than years. And yet, despite these monumental changes, I still feel as if I'm in a kind of a time-warp: the issues we used to grapple with when I was a programmer-analyst in shorts are still very much with us today, namely how to deliver reliable solutions in acceptable time frames, at acceptable costs and with clear business benefits – which is very different from delivering solutions on time, within budget and to spec which, as we'll see in this book, are concepts which don't lend themselves very well to the IT profession.

When I started out in IT in the early 1980s, we didn't have all the answers. Today though, we can be reasonably sure of what they are; while there will always be new technologies and management trends to learn, we can comfortably say that the four decades from the 1970s to the new millennium have provided us with a sufficiently critical mass of experience and lessons learnt. But this is where the logic breaks down: if success is the result of experience, trial and error, then IT should be one of the most successful sectors out there! Certainly, the average IT organization has had more than enough experience in terms of failed projects, budget ...