ITP Techblog

The best IT departments are more than twice as likely to finish a project on time and on budget as those who don't use world's best practice, a new report claims.

The Hackett Group's Beyond World-Class Service report says most projects are delivered on time, on budget and to specification (putting a lie to the "you can have any two of the three" rule), but despite meeting all the criteria of a successful project, return on investment is proving to be more problematic.

"The pace and urgency of digital business transformation may make it impractical to conduct formal post-project ROI assessments," says the report which suggests around 22% of projects it looked at couldn't quantify any RIO.

Of real concern to those overseeing IT budgets is the finding that the gap between the best performers and the rest of the pack. 

Datacentres ran eight times more efficiently per user compared with the peer group, product databases five times more efficiently and business intelligence and data management tools 4.5 times more efficiently per user.

The Hackett Group is an international agency which has completed more than 13,000 benchmarking studies with major corporations and government agencies. Information on the make-up of this particular study was not available.

The full report can be read here.