INFS 5057: Project Management IT Project Failure Essay Analysis

This essay delves into the critical aspects of IT project management, specifically focusing on the reasons behind IT project failures and strategies to mitigate them. It identifies key issues such as lack of management interest, cost reduction strategies, improper planning, the choice of technology, and overly optimistic scheduling. The essay then proposes solutions, including proper management attention, appropriate budgeting, the use of appropriate technology, and realistic scheduling. Furthermore, it presents two real-world examples of IT project failures: the data loss at GitLab and the data leakage at Facebook, discussing the scenarios, problems encountered, and any implemented strategies. The essay highlights the importance of effective project management and offers insights into how to avoid common pitfalls and achieve successful IT project outcomes.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR IT PROFESSIONALS
PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR IT PROFESSIONALS
Name of the Students
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Project management is very important for the IT professionals because it helps the IT
professionals to provide an outstanding design of their projects. It provides strategic
alignment to the IT projects of a company (Nulden & Scheepers 2020). It also helps a
company to provide clear direction and objectives regarding their IT projects. But there are
some problems faced by IT professionals while conducting the project management activity.
This essay focuses on the some common causes for IT project failure (Larsson &
Larsson 2020). In this essay, four common strategies are highlighted, with the help of which
the failure can be avoided. This essay also discussed regarding the two examples of IT project
failures.
Reasons of IT failure
There are many reasons for IT project failure. These are as follows:
 Lack of interest of the management
Sometimes, management of a company is not able to understand some
IT related matters and they leave the entire project to the IT teams only. It
highlights that, management is not at all interested in the IT projects (Razi et
al. 2020). As a result of that IT team gets more freedom to take decisions. It
can lead to a big problem for the company because technical team does not
have any idea regarding the business objectives of the company.
 Cost reduction strategies
All companies want to save the money when it is related to the
expenditure of the company (Zhu et al. 2020). If a company implements this
strategy in their IT projects then it may hamper their IT projects badly.

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Allocation of small and insufficient funds can lead to the procurement of less
skilled resources. Unfunded projects can lead to missing features or may have
some quality issues. It can lead to a great loss for the company.
 Improper planning
Many IT projects are initiated without any appropriate planning of the
scope and result of the project (Tsoy & Staples 2020). If the goals are not clear
then any project can be failed. Everything is managed in haphazard manner.
Successful IT project does not mean the delivery of the ultimate software
product. It actually means the desired result of the IT projects within the
assigned deadline and allocated funds. Improper planning may leads to
following issues in an IT project.
 Unclear scope and objective
 Incorrect time estimates
 Bad performance
 Inefficient use of resources
 Wrong estimation of expenditure
 Choice of technology
If the IT team selects efficient technology for doing their IT projects
then it protects the projects from technical failure. If the team selects incorrect
technologies then it will lead to a severe failure of the projects. Some project
managers select a programming language and a development tool because of
the professional preferences (Tang 2020). But other project managers select
the trendy and emerging technologies for software development. A project
may fail if the project manager selects programming language, operating

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environment or development environment that does not align with the business
objectives of the company.
 Overly-optimistic scheduling of projects
Sometimes, project managers prepare some overly optimistic schedules
for randomly assigned deadlines. It creates a huge pressure on the IT team as
well as on the team members (Razi et al. 2020). Team members may give
some extra effort to complete the assigned tasks within the assigned deadline.
But if there is a delay in single deliverable then it creates a bad impact. Then it
leads to the controlling and monitoring challenges.
 Overstaffing
It is an important issue for IT project failure. It leads to
miscommunication (Nulden & Scheepers 2020). It is not only increasing the
project expenditure as the integration of the different sections of code.
Integration testing is also very important before delivering the release.
Strategies for resolving these issues
 Giving proper attention
The management needs to pay proper attention to the IT projects and
gets a regular progress updates from the end of the team (Myers 2020). It helps
to give successful implementation of the projects.
 Proper budgeting
Company management should provide appropriate budget for their IT
projects. It helps the company to use high skilled resources for their IT

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projects (Larsson & Larsson 2020). It helps the company to provide quality
software to the consumer. Allocating appropriate budget helps the company to
hire appropriate man power for appropriate position, so that they can deliver
quality projects to the clients. Only hiring developers will not give the efficient
IT projects. They need business analyst, testers and project managers for
completing the projects.
 Using appropriate technology
IT team of a company should provide a proper attention on the
selection of appropriate technology. Project manger of an IT team must have
sound knowledge for a project. Technology selection is totally depends on the
selection of programming languages and development framework. For
example, the company wants to develop an online shopping website. For doing
this project, project manager can choose many efficient as well as popular
programming languages (Kidd 2020, p. 318). Some of these are PHP, Java,
ASP DOT NET and many others. If project manager wants to use Java as a
programming language then he should select some popular Integrated
Development Environments (such as Netbeans, Eccilpse and many others). He
may select Apache Tomcat as a server. He may use many databases such as
Oracle 12c/11g, Microsoft Access and many others. He should make sure that
team members have a sound knowledge in Core Java, Advanced Java and Java
Database Connectivity. If he wants to choose PHP as language, then he may
use Atom, Visual Studio and other platforms for writing the codes. He can use
XAMP/WAMP as a server. As a database, he may use Oracle, PostGreSQL,
Sybase, DB2 and many others.

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 Relialistic scheduling
It is a very important aspect for the successful implementation of IT
projects (Khosravi, Rezvani & Ashkanasy 2020). If the project manager
provides some Relialistic scheduling of the IT projects then it does not create
unnecessary pressures on the team members and they can provide quality
deliverables to their clients.
 Limiting staffs
If the company authority provides some staff limitation then it helps
them to provide proper communication among the staff members
(Gopalakrishnan & Adaikalam 2020). Proper communication gives
tremendous success to the organisation regarding their IT projects.
Examples of IT project failure
 Data loss at GitLab
In 2018, a very popular code collaboration platform GitLab
experienced a huge amount of data loss which can be treated as one of the for
out wages in the IT world. GitLab was used one database server but they
decided to test a solution using two servers (Garavaglia et al. 2020). Their
plan was to copy the data from production to test environment. In that
process, autocratic environment started to remove all the accounts from the
database which were detected as dangerous. As a result of increase in traffic,
copying procedure of data started to slow down. After that the process was
completely slow down because of data discrepancies. After many attempts to
resume this process, one employee decided to remove the test base and

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initiated the procedure again. But he accidentally deleted the production base.
Most disappointing part was that the copy of directory holding was empty
and a backup was taken for a long run. It was happened due to the
configuration error. As a result of that, there was an eighteen hours out wage
while 300 GB of consumer data was lost.
According to GitLab, company lost the data of at least five thousand
new projects, five thousand comments and seven hundred users (Anciferova,
Levin, & Levina 2020). The company committed their failures which got
huge respect.
For resolving this issue, they used back up procedures (Chiang & Lin
2020). They mentioned that it could prevent the data loss issue.
 Data leakage of Facebook
In 2019, Facebook confirmed that nearly fifty million accounts could
in risk. Hackers discovered vulnerability in their system that allowed them to
get access and they got some personal information of the account holders
(Afaq & Faisal 2020). The attack was detected on September 25, 2018. As
per the report published by New York Times, it was highlighted that there
were three software flaws in their network systems. It helped the hackers to
allow the accounts of the user. Many experts mentioned that hackers
discovered some vulnerability in the “View as” code. This function allows
checking how a profile looks like by other people. But at that day, ninety
million users logged out of their account while occurring this incident. It was
a largest incident in the history of Facebook.

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Because of their business strategy, Facebook did not reveal their
prevention strategy.
Conclusion
IT project management is a very important part for IT professionals. It helps them to
manage projects efficiently. Project manager must be well versed regarding the limitations
and factors regarding the initiation, execution as well as completion of the IT projects.
Changes in the IT projects may slow down the progress of the IT projects. But with good
leadership and management skills, it can be finished within the assigned deadline. Project
manager may use some project management tools (such as IT pro administration, Easy
startup, Security and Guaranteed uptimes) for managing the projects efficiently.

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