McKinsey on Government
Seven imperatives for success in IT megaprojects
Autumn 2011 | Kreg Nichols, Shantnu Sharma, and Richard Spires
Rapid advancements in information technology have benefited governments around the world, enabling them to provide new services and become more efficient. But as IT programs become larger and more complex, they also bring considerable and rising risk. In a recent study, McKinsey and Oxford University showed that one in six IT change initiatives overruns its budget by 200 percent and takes about 70 percent longer to implement than originally planned.
While many IT program failures in the private sector remain largely hidden from view, public-sector failures can receive national or worldwide attention. In an effort to understand To implement public-sector IT megaprojects successfully, leaders must pay close attention to process, people, and governance. We discuss seven imperatives that, although not technically difficult, require dramatic changes in mind-sets and ways of working. what causes such failures and what brings success, we interviewed more than 50 IT and procurement leaders in both the public and private sector and analyzed a variety of IT programs across the performance spectrum. We summarize our findings in this article.