Why Do Technology Projects Fail?

The Perils of Project Management by Committee

In a recent forum post regarding a major system upgrade I read the comment from one of the end users that the changes made were probably because of those "IT types that want something new to tinker with."

As someone who has been in the technology field for many years, I will tell you point blank, seasoned IT professionals do NOT want something new to tinker with when it comes to a production network or system, and will almost always err on the side of caution when it comes to adding something new or changing anything. We understand that change, any kind of change that has an impact on end users, will create headaches.

It is really frustrating to see remarks like that. For many IT Managers, there too many cooks in the kitchen telling you what kind of soup to cook. How would you like to be responsible for cooking the soup, and not even being allowed to shop for your own ingredients?

The unfortunate thing in technology, and I speak from many years of experience in the field, is that most technology decisions are made for reasons other than technology.
"IT types" usually have some say in how things are implemented, but rarely have the ultimate say in what gets implemented and when. In many cases choices are made by some form of committee, or at least influenced by other non technical departments.

As the old joke goes, if a camel were designed by a committee it would have 12 humps.