Large-scale IT projects are fascinating subjects. Quite often a lot of money, reputation and prestige are at stake. For those of us with unbounded ambition – or simply a sense of duty to the organization we serve - they provide challenges as rich and versatile as few other modern collaborative adventures.
Sometimes they even succeed and the team´s claim to fame is well deserved. Sometimes they do not and drama and tragedy unfold before your very eyes. Shakespeare would have enjoyed it and any student of organizational behavior would as well.
The objective here is not to create a comprehensive monograph or “how-to-guide” about large-scale IT projects. Instead, the purpose is to pick, elaborate and opine on certain relevant aspects of such projects (e.g. budgeting) based on my personal experience over more than two decades across different industries.
A word of warning: Please, do not let yourself be misled by my marginal academic credentials (in the distant past); any anecdotes, observations and thoughts I offer should never be confused with scientific evidence of any kind. Furthermore, and needless to say, no two projects are truly identical; even if industry and objective are the same, there are always different resources, a different context, different circumstances to deal with which obviate simple generalizations. Still, the blog reflects on actual experience not fiction or imagination and as such it should be able to provide some “food for thought” to those who have to cope with large-scale IT projects in practice.
Finally, you are kindly asked to refrain from contacting the author in order to discuss any of the topics mentioned. As much as I wish you the best for your assignments I would not be able to follow-up. Thank you for your kind consideration.
Hagen Pfeiffer
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