Research from analyst firm Gartner finds that only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed business outcome goals, meaning more than half of these projects are at risk of failure.
The company’s annual global survey of more than 3,100 CIOs and CTOs, and more than 1,100 non-IT CXOs, reported that for a given group of IT leaders, the chance of a digital initiative being successful is random. . Daniel Sanchez Reyna, vice president analyst at Gartner, called the results “the curse of random success.”
He added: “Your chance of success is 50:50.” “It’s like flipping a coin.”
Speaking to Computer Weekly during the analysis firm’s annual European conference in Barcelona about why the chance of success is random, Sanchez-Reyna said one of the most common problems is that full responsibility for the project falls to the IT director.
He said that IT managers who have a high failure rate of digital initiatives believe they are the only ones responsible for the projects. “IT managers don’t feel responsible and feel like it’s the CIO’s responsibility,” he said. “Business areas are involved at the beginning to provide IT managers with the specifications they need and a deadline, but then they disappear. When the IT manager shows the application two to three months later, the chances of it matching his original expectations are very low because they disappeared in the process.”
A Gartner survey found that CIOs who co-deliver digital initiatives with business leaders achieve project success 71% of the time. This more positive result demonstrates the benefit of CEOs having equal responsibilities and participating equally with the IT manager at every stage of the project, Sanchez-Reyna said. Adopting such an approach breaks the stigma of random success inherent in projects that lack common ownership, he said.
Tangentially, project failure is also related to the failure of IT managers to relinquish control of IT. “Many IT managers are unwilling to break down IT walls to allow other technologists outside of IT, such as IT roles in finance, marketing and HR, to participate in delivering digital initiatives.”
According to Sanchez-Reyna, they may feel like they are losing power and influence if they open up access and control over IT that has traditionally been managed entirely by the IT department.
“That’s a false expectation because the CEO doesn’t care if you only do it with IT people or with people outside IT. The CEO just wants the digital solution on time and with high quality,” he said.
Sanchez-Reyna said business managers must break down the organizational wall by using IT and get more involved in it Technology production. As companies become increasingly digital, this involves aligning the business with IT, rather than simply treating IT as part of the business that provides digital functions.
Gartner uses the term “digital vanguard” to define a new generation of IT managers who are focused on collaborating closely with business managers to achieve success on digital projects.
“Behind every Digital Forefront IT Executive, a Digital Forefront CTO guides and empowers COOs and their teams to co-lead and build digital delivery with IT,” said Sanchez-Reyna. “Digital Frontier CIOs nurture their peers into digital frontier CIOs. These CIOs make it easier for COOs to lead digital operations with them, and for business area staff to build digital solutions alongside IT.
From an IT architecture and platform perspective, Sanchez-Reyna urged IT managers to ensure that the platforms their teams develop and deploy are not designed solely for IT professionals within the organization’s IT function. The platform should be usable by technologists outside of the IT department, such as those who work in finance and human resources.
He said the digital skills of those people outside IT also needed to be updated, to enable them to collaborate and work alongside the IT department to successfully deliver digital initiatives. In general, this approach requires agile project management.
