Apparently senior management has arrived at a Zen-like "I'm okay; you're okay" place with regards to IT projects now; Larry Dignan reports on a recent survey by Dynamic Markets indicating that while 1/3 of respondents had failed IT projects, nearly half of manager's surveyed said that was the norm and a whopping 70% continue to fund projects even for poorly performing projects.

This all says to me that the culture surrounding IT has become too accustomed to failure and too forgiving of poorly run projects. The overall failure numbers from the study aren't a surprise-they have been that high and higher for years now-but finally we may have a clue as to why it is that such terrible performance is the norm in IT projects: no one cares enough to fix it.

With a glut of new data and new ideas on how to address chronic underperformance in IT projects, the tools are available to improve both success rates and perceptions in the field. My own incessant whining about the potential for adopting agile principles for many IT projects instead of simply software projects is starting to receive some empirical backing, qualifications are becomingincreasingly stringent for project management, and there is generally a broader understanding today of the various factors which contribute to project failure. Given all this, it boggles me that senior management have become so conditioned to that failure that they no longer seem to be looking for ways to avoid it, instead accepting it simply as a cost of doing business.

Is that how your department rolls? Or are you looking to limit your failure and their scope with modern insight on the problems?