Using construction projects as a basis for improvement in ICT project management

It is a disturbing fact that the majority of information and communication technology (ICT) projects fail to meet the time, cost and performance objectives set for them. Many of them fail spectacularly. Of course, these failures may be inevitable, and due to the nature of the projects undertaken: until relatively recently, this was the argument used for the repeated under-performance of construction project management. It is the contention, and overall hypothesis of the research described in this article, that the ICT industry could learn from progress already made in the context of other industries, whose projects have similar features, such as complex designs and long delivery timescales. Construction is an obvious comparator. It is argued here that sufficient similarity exists between ICT and construction for a generic project management model to be derived. Such a model has been developed from the literature and used to compare and contrast the products and processes of project management in the two industries. The work is part of a completed Ph.D. study funded by BT pic in which the model was examined and refined by coded interviews that related to 163 transactions in the two industries. This article reports on results, together with some tentative conclusions that might improve the approach to project management in ICT and at the same time add to the understanding of the nature of projects in both industries and the way they are managed.