3 Reasons Why Professional Services IT Transformation Projects Go Wrong

You can’t win the race by standing still.
Professional services firms, much like BizBrolly, need to innovate constantly to stay ahead of their competition. Unfortunately, the sector isn’t immune from bad decision-making and, too often, the best intentions of project managers turn into career-limiting IT disasters.
Here’s a rundown of the top reasons why professional services IT transformation projects go wrong.
Ignorance (I)
Professional services projects generally tend have a short lifecycle that runs between 3-6 months (at the most). This short time span, however, seems to lull project managers into a false sense of security. While projects may seem straightforward, with very little impact of failure, even one setback leaves you scratching for answers right at the back of the queue.
Confusion (C)
More than half of professional services IT projects fail due to poorly defined requirements. You will never hit the bullseye if you don’t set up a target; it’s as simple as that. Yet still unclear requirements are one of the main reasons for failed IT projects, according to The Chartered Institute for IT.
Expectations (E)
Big data is a big deal in the professional services market. The amount of data you can collect on you customers today is almost bottomless. While that’s a wonderful thing, it also sets high expectations.
Firms start big data analytics projects because they are tempted by the promise of all-knowing insight. The reality, however, is often less game-changing. The software itself won’t provide all the answers and firms often don’t realise the need for business change to collect, analyse and use the data.
Buying software and expecting it to work without any further effort is like buying a book and not reading it.
Therefore, always remember, I-C-E.
Don’t set your IT transformation projects up to fail. While it is an absolutely pressing task to manage an IT project, and almost every project will come with its own array of challenges, remember that you can’t stop them all. You must certainly reduce the risk of failure by fully understanding what you’re taking on, setting reasonable and achievable expectations and outlining your business requirements at the start.
After all, fail to prepare and you prepare to fail.