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Summary – Without clear governance or business objectives, IT projects breed frustration, budget overruns and under-used deliverables. Informal governance, a cursory requirements document and confusing technology with value lead to delays, extra costs and poor adoption. Solution: establish formal governance with a cross-functional steering committee and regular review rituals, define functional and technical scope at RFP with clear KPIs, appoint an experienced project manager and a committed business sponsor, size resources appropriately and drive change with continuous value tracking.
IT projects continue to generate frustration and resource waste, not due to technology, but because of imprecise management and poorly defined objectives. Despite adopting agile methodologies and powerful tools, most initiatives struggle to deliver measurable business value, rally users, and meet set deadlines.
To reverse this trend, organizations must put governance, scoping, and business accountability back at the heart of their project strategy. This article offers a constructive analysis of recurring IT failure causes and presents concrete levers to secure value from the outset.
Inefficient Project Governance and Scoping
Poorly defined governance leads to scattered decisions and late trade-offs. Without clear business scoping, IT teams drift around solutions without understanding the underlying goal.
Lack of Structured Governance
When roles and responsibilities are not formalized, every stakeholder interprets priorities according to their own frame of reference. Strategic decisions get bogged down in informal committees or scattered email exchanges, without any traceability. The result is an erratic approval pace and misunderstandings between the IT department, business sponsors, and developers.
The absence of a dedicated steering committee also complicates risk assessment and financial trade-offs. Without regular checkpoints, budget overruns are often discovered late in the project, when it’s too late to get back on track. This lack of transparency weighs even heavier on AI or automation projects, which are highly exposed to scope changes.
The solution is to establish a formal governance framework, with a steering committee bringing together the IT department, business units, and external partners. Clear bodies and monitoring rituals (weekly reviews, quarterly committees) make it possible to quickly identify bottlenecks and course-correct before any major decision.
Insufficient Functional and Technical Scoping
An overly brief software requirements specification or a rushed needs analysis leaves many gray areas. Incomplete specifications create uncertainties that translate into scope creep and unplanned feature requests. This gradual inflation destabilizes schedules and balloons budgets without anyone taking responsibility.
Beyond functional scope, technical constraints must also be clearly documented. Without an interface map, dependency mapping, and performance requirements, teams end up in a makeshift situation, adding quick fixes or temporary architectures that don’t hold up under load.
Robust scoping is based on formalizing business requirements, validating priority use cases, and defining success indicators from the earliest phases. Creating a proof-of-concept prototype allows you to quickly test hypotheses before committing to large-scale development.
Persistent Confusion Between Solution and Business Goal
Too often, projects kick off around a favorite technology—AI, cloud platforms, RPA—without a prior analysis of the value it should deliver. Enthusiasm for novelty eclipses the assessment of profitability and actual use cases, resulting in gimmicky deliverables or ones that are too sophisticated for real-world needs.
This approach leads to delivered products that are not adopted. Users don’t embrace the tool because they don’t perceive its tangible utility in their daily processes. The result is low adoption, canceled training sessions and, ultimately, an almost nonexistent return on investment.
It is essential to place the business objective before the technical solution: define expected gains (reduced lead times, improved quality, preserved margins) and select technology based solely on these criteria. This shift in priorities ensures faster adoption and measurable value as soon as you go live.
Example: A Swiss financial services firm launched an AI-powered client portal to analyze purchase behaviors without first identifying target metrics. At launch, the adoption rate did not exceed 10% because advisors saw no tangible improvement in their follow-up process. This initiative demonstrates that a lack of clear KPI definitions before development can turn an innovative project into a mere showcase with no operational value.
Solid Project Oversight with Sponsor and Project Manager
Entrusting coordination to a project manager with proven experience drastically reduces the risk of drift. Appointing a fully accountable business sponsor ensures permanent alignment between operational needs and technical development.
Key Role of an Experienced Project Manager
An adept project manager anticipates blocking points, manages priorities, and maintains a controlled schedule. They lead governance bodies, handle risks, and ensure each deliverable meets the initial requirements. When deviations occur, they have a proven methodology to adjust resources and timelines.
Selecting this profile relies not only on technical skills but also on the ability to unite multidisciplinary teams. Their leadership is a decisive driver for maintaining cohesion and engagement throughout the project. Each validated milestone becomes a testament to mastery and trust.
In parallel, an experienced project manager knows how to establish living documentation: delivery plans, progress reports, and risk reviews. This traceability facilitates decision-making, avoids unnecessary back-and-forth, and provides each stakeholder with a clear view of progress.
Active Involvement of the Business Sponsor
The business sponsor represents the management line that funds and champions the project. Their engagement is crucial to overcome organizational barriers and arbitrate conflicting priorities. They must be available for key committees and quickly approve functional changes.
Without this direct participation, the project loses its business anchoring: specifications drift, real needs are ignored, and resources scatter. The sponsor must also be ready to defend the project before senior management and mobilize necessary resources, whether tools or external experts.
A motivated sponsor drives a virtuous dynamic: every team understands that objectives are not only technical but strategic for the company. Their role extends to communication and promotion of the project, thus facilitating end-of-cycle adoption.
Cross-Functional Collaboration Framework
Beyond the project manager and sponsor, success relies on close collaboration between IT and business. Mixed working sessions (workshops, user stories) allow continuous confrontation of needs and technical proposals. This cross-functionality avoids silos and fosters collective accountability.
Asynchronous collaborative tools (ticket portals, shared Kanban boards) support this collaboration by providing continuous visibility into progress. Each stakeholder can follow tasks and provide real-time feedback.
This setup creates an agile environment where adjustments are made smoothly, without communication breakdowns. Management becomes truly collaborative, and deliverables gain precision and business relevance.
Example: In a Swiss logistics company’s information system overhaul, responsibility was assigned to a senior project manager from the sector, supported by an operations lead. The business sponsor took part in daily meetings. The project met its milestones and exceeded its incident-reduction targets, confirming that the combination of structured oversight and an engaged sponsor delivers significant business value.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
Maintaining Value with Sizing and Change Management
Allocating the right resources and skills from the outset ensures the feasibility and sustainability of your solution. Change management is not just communication: it conditions adoption and the measurement of added value.
Realistic Sizing of Resources and Skills
Defining required expertise (architecture, security, DevOps, data science) in the RFP avoids understaffing that delays deliveries. You should account for the learning curve on emerging technologies and plan capacity reserves to absorb unforeseen issues.
Complex projects often require a hybrid team, combining open-source experts and internal profiles. This mix promotes knowledge transfer and ensures independence from a single vendor. Sizing should also include post-go-live support to handle incidents and optimize performance.
Finally, an evolving staffing plan allows you to quickly adjust headcount according to milestones. A quality gate or major performance test may require specialized skills in the short term. This flexibility avoids bottlenecks and secures progressive scaling.
User-Centered Change Management
The change management goes beyond simple communication: it must prepare users to adopt new practices. It’s best to start during the prototyping phase by incorporating training sessions, co-design workshops, and ongoing feedback loops.
Each new feature must be supported by contextual documentation and training modules tailored to specific business roles. Internal ambassadors, trained in advance, help spread the word and gather objections even before go-live.
After deployment, collecting feedback and iteratively updating the system reinforces user confidence. Dedicated support and adoption indicators (login rates, process completion) allow you to measure progress and, if needed, trigger targeted corrective actions.
Continuous Value Tracking and Performance Indicators
Rather than considering the project complete at delivery, it’s essential to establish continuous tracking of the delivered value. Precise KPIs (cost reduction, productivity gains, user satisfaction) must be regularly updated to demonstrate the solution’s tangible impact.
A shared dashboard, automatically updated via reporting tools, provides a real-time view. Quarterly reviews allow you to redirect development toward features with higher ROI and adjust the roadmap based on evolving business priorities.
This approach transforms the project into a strategic asset whose performance is managed like a profit center. It strengthens IT’s legitimacy and demonstrates the organization’s ability to capitalize on its digital investments.
Example: During the deployment of a customer relationship management solution in a Swiss SME, change management included automated post-deployment tracking of satisfaction and usage indicators. A dashboard reduced support tickets by 25% in three months, showing that continuous support and value tracking quickly prevent misuse drift.
Transform Your IT Projects into Strategic Assets
To secure the success of IT initiatives, it’s imperative to restore clear governance, formalize rigorous scoping, and fully empower business sponsors. Entrusting oversight to experienced project managers, sizing appropriate resources, and deploying proactive change management guarantee rapid adoption and measurable ROI.
Our experts guide organizations through this process, from the initial audit to value tracking in production. By combining a contextual approach, scalable open-source solutions, and agile governance, they transform IT projects into sustainable performance levers.
