30 Oct Why IT Projects Still Fail
Even with strategic alignment among IT and business leaders, technical and transformational initiatives still fall flat at an unacceptable rate. Here’s how IT can learn from its mistakes.
IT organizations have worked hard to get away from the problems that plagued past project delivery processes.
They’ve replaced expansive scopes, the waterfall methodology, and long timelines with iterative development, the agile approach, and multiweek sprints, hoping to avert the big failures that have littered IT’s history.
Those changes have indeed helped, but many IT projects still fail.
Current figures that measure IT project success are hard to come by, but surveys offer insight into the topic.
The Project Management Institute’s 2025 Pulse of the Profession report found that about 80% of enterprise projects met business goals, meaning one in five did not.
Meanwhile, the 2025 MIT report “The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025” listed an eye-popping 95% failure rate for enterprise generative AI pilot projects, defining failure as those not showing measurable financial returns within six months.
Instead, failure today means an IT project doesn’t deliver expected benefits, according to CIOs, project leaders, researchers, and IT consultants. Failure can also mean a project doesn’t produce returns, runs so late as to be obsolete when completed, or doesn’t engage users who then shun it in response.
So, what’s going on? Why do IT projects continue to fail? Here are the common culprits:
1. Lack of project management expertise
Expensive and highly visible projects get the benefit of being led by professional project managers, but small and midsize projects often don’t, says Eric Bloom, executive director of the IT Management and Leadership Institute.
So those small and midsize projects are assigned to someone like a business analyst without any true training, he says. Those workers typically don’t have the expertise, training, or experience necessary to succeed in the project manager role, nor are they given enough time to learn what it takes to manage a project or to complete the extra project management tasks.
Bloom asserts that CIOs would see higher success rates if more projects have trained project managers. They’re better able to corral and schedule resources, coordinate staff schedules, and get everyone moving in the same direction — and do so across multiple projects. They’re also more capable of implementing the governance needed to keep projects on target to deliver what’s expected and not let scope creep run up costs and schedules without adding additional value.
2. No alignment with business objectives
IT leaders and now business leaders, too, get enamored with technologies, despite years of admonishments not to do so. The result is a misalignment between the project objectives and business goals, experienced CIOs and veteran project managers say.
Kathleen Walch, director of AI engagement and community at the Project Management Institute, says organizations continue to “have a solution first and then find a problem to backfill.” The common executive order “to do something with AI” is the latest iteration of this problem, she says.
Walch advises organizations to first identify a specific pain point or objective, craft the plan to address it, and build the business case for it.
“IT projects should start with a business case that’s approved and re-evaluated as a project progresses through its lifecycle,” he says. “Often, the business case isn’t looked at again until after go-live and significant cost overruns have already occurred.”
3. No business ownership
Even when IT is perfectly aligned with business objectives, a project can still tank when no business leader has accountability, says Eric Stettler, a partner in the technology transformation practice at Kearney, a global strategy and management consulting firm.
Stettler says a business owner with clear accountability is needed to ensure that business resources are available when required as well as to ensure process changes and worker adoption happen. He notes that having CIOs — instead of a business owner — try to make those things happen “would be a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario.”
“CIOs can make sure the right process ownership is in place, and that leaders are aligned to a common set of objectives, but ultimately the business has to decide whether it’s going to operate differently,” Stettler adds.
4. Lack of business sponsor engagement
Business leader ownership is not enough; the owner also must commit adequate time for involvement and oversight, Stettler says.
“Often people who have operational responsibility for an initiative give the program a 30-minute status update window, they check to make sure everything is tracking green, but they don’t fully immerse themselves on the decisions being made,” he says. “The fact that they don’t spend more time on how the future of the business will run is a big error.”
As a result, they can miss signs that the project is going off track, and they don’t cultivate enough trust with project leaders for them to feel comfortable escalating issues early enough.
“Executives need to make more time and engage across all levels of the program. They can’t just let the leaders come talk to them. They need to do spot checks and quality reviews of deliverable updates, and check in with those throughout the program,” Stettler says. “And they have to have the attitude of ‘Bring stuff to me when I can be helpful.’”
5. Not involving all stakeholders
IT project manager Krista Phillips recounts one case in which a large multinational corporation implemented a new technology across its companies but caught one division completely unaware of the ongoing implementation work.
Turns out that specific division had been left out of all the planning and project processes.
“I don’t know how the [project leaders] missed that, but they missed a whole unit. So when the system went live, they were like, ‘What is this?’ That caused the project team to miss scope,” says Phillips, a PMP holder serving as president of PMI’s Pikes Peak Regional Chapter in Colorado.
6. Not enough resources
Another reason IT projects fail: underestimating the resources and talent required to do the work as well as underestimating the amount of work itself.
“It’s always been an issue, but it’s becoming a bigger issue today,” says Sanjeev Vohra, chief technology and innovation officer at IT services firm Genpact, explaining that IT leaders looking to harness AI and other emerging technologies simply don’t have the experience to know exactly what skills will be required, how much they’ll cost to acquire, or how long it might take to get them.
7. Inexperienced teams
Similarly, inexperienced teams can doom a project, according to Phelps.
“I’ve seen projects fail because of inexperienced project managers. Just because someone has a certification in project management doesn’t mean they are a good project manager,” he says.
Stettler cites a related issue that can also ding a project’s success: assuming that more experienced talent can be added to a project if it runs into trouble. “There’s often only a handful of people who can do the work needed, and they’re often already scheduled well in advance,” he says, noting that even if such experts do take on an unexpected assignment, they’ll likely not have the bandwidth needed to succeed.
Phelps, Stettler, and others recommend that CIOs, their business partners on projects, and project leaders thoroughly vet workers for required skills before assigning them to the project and then ensure they’re committed for the time needed to complete their tasks.
8. Ignoring the need for change management skills
Projects need more than skilled project managers; they also need leaders skilled in change. If projects don’t have skilled change managers, they’ll likely fall short of expectations, says Nick Kramer, a principal for applied solutions at SSA & Co., a global consulting firm advising companies on strategic execution.
Skilled change managers know how to align incentives to get people to accept new ways of working, and they’re deft at identifying and counteracting obstacles that could hinder adoption of new technologies, he says. They’re often able to get reluctant workers to get over their hesitations by helping them understand the why behind change, too.
“Change management is often viewed as just a communications plan, and there’s lip service done to it, but change management is really difficult,” Kramer adds, noting that he has seen more projects fail because of poor change management than poor technology implementations. “To succeed, projects need a CIO or someone else to be an agent of change, they need someone who knows how to drive change.”
Article written by Mary K,Pratt 27th October 2025
https://www.cio.com/article/4077457/why-it-projects-still-fail-2.html