Your IT, Digital, AI, Cloud Project is…

…Likely Going To Fail.

Strategy Control Room Advanced members can access the new IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center-of-Excellence here.

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You do not want to hear this, especially if you’re knee-deep in an IT project. If you have spent more than a year speaking to IT experts and meticulously planning your project and about forty percent into delivering the project, this is the last thing you want to hear.

Yet, you need to hear this.

IT projects have the worst track record of any project, including those notoriously delayed defense contracts you read about in the news. IT projects are frequently over budget, behind schedule, and fail to deliver what they promised (outcomes). This poor performance is typical across industries, regions, and types of IT projects. This is a finding across several consulting firms, universities that study projects, and our own experience with clients.

You can ignore this Center of Excellence (CoE), assume your project will be the exception, and plow ahead, but chances are you’ll become another failed IT statistic.

Or you can learn from this IT, Digital, AI, Cloud Center-of-Excellence.

It is far better to do the work today to either fix your IT project or plan for the next IT project. The reality is that all of us, at some point or another, will be a part of or impacted by some IT project.

The findings in this CoE broadly apply across all projects, and we will, at times, use non-IT examples to explain some concepts.

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Across all the IT projects we have managed, advised on, or reviewed, we have distilled the insights on what makes a successful IT project. These insights come from years of working with clients, including digital transformation efforts and large-scale AI implementations.

This includes our significantly more extensive archive of projects than what members have seen within Insider, Legacy, or SCRA over the last 15 years. We have yet to publish those to StrategyTraining.com and SCRA. As you can see from all our updates, this is an ongoing process. We hold the largest available repository of management consulting analyses, tools, toolkits, methodologies, proposals and studies, and sales techniques, and it keeps growing.

Those insights have been condensed into a single ~168-page internal guide we use when advising on IT projects. We hand this internal document to our teams, and we are now making it available to you.

We’re releasing the first two sections for the SCRA members and will continue to share more over the next month.

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Noteworthy Highlight

Strategic Literacy: Most professionals believe they’re growing when they consume information. Books. Courses. Frameworks. But the real advantage comes from how you process what you read, and what you do with it. The Strategic Literacy program teaches a unique approach to reading to get uncommon results. Once you see it, you won’t approach information the same way again. Accessible to Insiders and Legacy members on StrategyTraining.com.

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The Hidden Reason IT Projects Fail

There’s a subtle, powerful reason most IT projects fail. And it’s not what you think.

It has nothing to do with budgets, timelines, vendors, or technology. It’s rooted in how decisions are made and defended inside organizations. It’s about the psychology of teams under stress.

You won’t find this insight in traditional project management literature, but it has played a decisive role in nearly every IT failure we’ve seen. It’s part of the unique insights we make available only to our clients and members.

It’s one of the most important ideas we’ve uncovered, and we walk through it in detail in the CoE. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and you’ll start to recognize it everywhere.

If your project is already underway, this one blind spot may become the reason it quietly derails.

We explain exactly how this works and how to fix it in the complete IT, Digital, AI, Cloud Center-of-Excellence.

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Noteworthy Highlight

A once-in-a-lifetime chance to co-author a book with Bill Matassoni, former McKinsey and BCG senior partner, worldwide head of marketing at McKinsey, and head of the McKinsey Quarterly. We’re doing this only once, and your name could appear beside Bill’s, mine, and some of our most senior clients in a publication aimed at top executives and corporate leaders. This is The Published Author Program. Learn more here or email [email protected].

Want to become a bestselling author with a smaller chapter in our other co-authored project (The Published Author Program, Lite) instead? Secure your spot in our next Lite co-authored book for an affordable $997 or 4 payments of $275.

For both co-authored projects, all you need to do is write your chapter and we’ll handle the rest. We’ll produce a beautifully designed book and work to get it to #1 on Amazon in at least one category, earning you the “bestselling author” title for life. You’ll also receive a professionally designed PDF of your chapter to share, plus bonus training on how to leverage the book to build your brand. And if you need help in packaging your ideas and thoughts into a chapter, we have an optional wordsmithing add-on. Learn more and secure your chapter spot here.

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Case Studies: Why IT Projects Fail

The IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center of Excellence also outlines the best-practice guidelines for IT projects (and any project, whether you are building a road or an airport, since the principles are the same).

We have included detailed case studies explaining why specific projects failed and how they deviated from best practices.

We follow the advice we always offer to management consultants and industry leaders.

1. Never go broad in a case study unless there is a clear reason for doing so.
2. Find the one issue that needs to be studied rather than analyzing an entire company, which is practically impossible and yields little useful information.
3. Case-study specific failures versus broad successes.
4. Failures teach more than successes.
5. We cannot know what was successful when the project is just completed due to the hidden reason IT projects fail. We cover this in detail in this CoE.

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Noteworthy Highlight

How Not to Appear Weak in Meetings: People aren’t just negotiating with you in the moment. They’re negotiating with your reputation. The meeting starts, the room shifts, and control slips before you speak. You hesitate: too forceful, or too soft? Not appearing weak and not being weak are not the same. Some manage the room well and still walk away with less than they planned. This two-part Legacy program shows how to shift perception early, avoid silent concessions, and hold your ground without creating conflict. Insiders can upgrade to Legacy and return to Insider later without losing Insider status (provided there is continuous membership). Just email [email protected] when you switch back so we can reactivate your access.

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The Planning Fallacy

Bad things happen that are outside your control. We accept that, and it is normal. There is, however, something that everyone does and has become normalized.

There is a belief that if you do everything right, follow all the best practices, speak to all the experts, get their sign-off, and get all approvals, then you have prepared for everything.

This is common, and it’s wrong. It is a bad choice to believe you can see the future and predict everything that could happen. It is also a bad choice not to build in realistic contingencies and assess the risks.

See the program on immigration where we discuss the risk factors practically no one considers. It will help you think about risk even if you are not immigrating. This is an editor’s choice program.

If you are telling yourself the following in your IT project, these are red flags:

“I am very confident in my plan.”
“Everyone has signed off on this project plan, which gives me confidence.”
“Every expert agrees with my thinking.”
“I feel good about where we are going.”
“I must build a solid business case ASAP.”
“Everyone is on board, and we are not getting distracted.”
“We must figure out all the steps ASAP.”
“I have a clear idea of the budget, so the numbers are under control.”

In our experience, all of these are warning signs. And you will see why in the IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center-of-Excellence.

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Noteworthy Highlight

If you are a leader who wants help positioning yourself for managing larger projects/being given bigger roles, email [email protected].

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What is The Strategy Control Room Advanced?

The Type Of Materials That Consulting Firms Never Share, Never Want to Teach Their Clients, and Guard with Their Lives.

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This is not duplicate of the ppt. used to produce the StrategyTraining.com videos. It contains much more. We have used the same files in our consulting studies, winning >$1 million consulting proposals and client workshops. Access all our books, including bestselling books no longer available to the public and books that were never available to the public, as well as book drafts. Peruse flipcharts used for client relationship building and project workshops, private strategic planning documents, and Centers of Excellence.

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The reason we call our knowledge management system the Strategy Control Room is that it allows you to have a place where you can go in and gain access to superior IP that can help you not only set apart your deliverables, not only gain an edge over your internal and external competitors, but access materials that can become an intelligence that powers the growth of your unit, practice, team, or even of your entire organization.

Imagine a control room with access to information your internal and external competitors dream of having. You go in, you pull relevant advanced IP, you see what you can integrate into your work today, and you integrate on the fly. Rinse and repeat. Do this at least one time a week and it can set you on a very different career trajectory.

Enroll for SCRA here.

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If you’re an SCRA member, the IT, Digital, AI, and Cloud Center-of-Excellence is now available here.

Not a member yet? Enroll here: strategytraining.com/pages/scr and select Strategy Control Room Advanced.

We care about your success and are here to support you. Feel free to reach out with questions at [email protected].

Thank you for being part of the StrategyTraining community.

Access New IT/Digital/AI/Cloud Center-of-Excellence

Take care,

Kris, Michael & The StrategyTraining.com | FIRMSconsulting.com Team