If you asked project professionals to define what project management is, you'd likely get a fairly consistent response. It's the discipline of defining and achieving targets whilst optimising the use of resources. Successful project management requires that all project management knowledge areas (scope, time, cost, quality, human resource, communications, risk, procurement, project integration) be managed effectively.

"... the art of project management [is] a mixture of administration, planning, experience, analysis, people-skills, political wrangling, leadership and a little bit of luck..."

IT Project Statistics

According to the Standish Group, British Computer Society:

• 31% of IT projects will be cancelled before completion
• 52.7% of completed projects cost over their original estimates
• 1 in 8, the number of projects that can be considered truly successful

Why do we fail?

Objectives of the project not clear Often businesses don't really know what they want... only that they need to do something different.

Lack of upfront planning It's often boring and time consuming, but planning will be a determing factor in whether a project succeeds. Fail to plan at your own peril.

Lack of change management Installing the "software" is just a very small part of successfully deploying an IT solution. Much of the work is supporting the change process.