Will tightening up the government's "gateway" project-managment process reduce the chance of IT failure?

According to Computing magazine, the UK government plans to tighten up its IT-project review process following a series of embarrassing project failures.

BPG is not convinced this will help.

As a system, the government's "gateway" process provides an unusually thorough set of rules for managing project risk. The supporting material, also, is thorough and useful.

However, in practice the system does not always protect against the risk of projects failing or running over budget. What the government needs, in addition to theory and documentation, is a mentoring program.

Risk management is the art of balancing speed and cost of execution against the potential for problems. So the only way it could be comprehensively taught is by providing a manual that describes how to act at every potential junction for every different environment, system, and business need.

That's a big manual.

A more sensible approach would be to have experienced project managers mentor the less experienced. Or, at the very least, to have the experienced teach groups of the inexperienced.

That approach would solve more problems than a tightening of guidelines. The guidelines are not so loose that they cause projects to fail; they are simply inexpertly applied.

Taken from ITRM