The ability to deliver initiatives that make breakthroughs in the business is the differentiator of a truly successful IT department.  However, the project success rates are very poor.  Failure rate estimates range from 40-75% of project are over budget, late, or fail to deliver the required functionality.

Failing projects are prevalent in all industries and, although the actual failure rates are very subjective, the incidence of troubled projects is easily more than half of all projects. Finding the Gold in Red Projects looks at the value in performing a formal recovery on a red projects.  It uses current and historical data, case studies, and the presenters twenty-five years experience of recovering projects to illustrate the process.

Estimates for the annual cost of project failure are as high as two  trillion dollars a year.  The rates for  projects being at risk are in the 60-70% range, and a quarter of all project's problems are so bad they are simply canceled prior completion.  Preferably, all projects will run according to plan. However, moving from a 60% failure rate to 0%  is unrealistic.  First, organizations must understand what it is that makes their projects fail.  Reasons range from methodology to human failure to poorly understood concepts to scope creep. Analyzing projects as systems uncovers all the factors that can contribute to failure.

Back From Red: Recovering Failing Projects describes the key elements in recovering red projects.  It is based on the process developed while recovering dozens of projects. It covers:

Whether you are a project or a functional manager, estimates are a daily part of your life.  Team members need to make estimates for a variety of reasons, these include:

• The amount of time for a task.
• The cost for resources.
• The cost of software, hardware and other materials.
• The time required to finish a task.

However, there are many problems with estimates.  This presentation focuses on the sociological and psychological aspects of doing estimates.