Six ways to save your IT project from the scrap heap

Tight times require new strategies for keeping your IT projects on line and your career moving forward

"Business case assumptions must be thoughtful and clearly supported in terms a CFO will understand," he says. "Include metrics on power usage, maintenance contracts, and head-count savings. These often can't clearly be seen until the next fiscal year. CFOs crave cost-control drivers that help manage long-term planning."

And if you can show payback for an IT investment over 18 months or less, even better. Finance officers love to recover the cost of tech assets before they're fully depreciated, says Baker.

IT project survival tip No. 3: Embrace optimism

All projects rely on assumptions. The bigger the project, the bigger the assumptions. Sometimes the key to getting your project approved is simply a matter of assuming the best rather than the worst.

Adam Nelson, director of IT consulting at Keane, tells the story of a statewide ERP project initiated six years ago. The ambitious project aimed to consolidate the financial, procurement, and HR resources of more than 50 state agencies on a single platform. Based on the initial projections of the IT professional services firm hired to do the job, the state legislature approved a fixed $68 million for the project, which was slated to take two to three years and produce up to $117 million in cost savings.

Well, that didn't happen. After two years, the project's original contractors asked for more money, got rebuffed, and left the project. Two years later, a second firm that had been brought in to finish the project did the same thing. The state government ended up taking control of the program.

"The reality is that if the original IT company had been 100 percent honest and said that this project would cost a minimum of $90 million and take at least five years, the legislature might have said no," says Nelson. "The optimistic financial picture probably seemed necessary to obtain sponsorship and budget, but the numbers were simply unrealistic."

Nelson adds that the ERP project is finally on the road to success, though it's still not fully deployed and its ROI will likely be much different than what was projected at the outset.

Yet without those initial rosy projections, the project would never have gotten off the ground -- and it needed to get off the ground, says Nelson. It really needed more accurate financials, supported by more standardized program management and earned value, more oversight, and smaller, more frequent milestones.

"In my experience, it's better to be transparent and realistic about everything, but there's no reason you shouldn't add assumptions and budget for contingencies," says Nelson. "I would never presume to ask for 100 percent of a project's costs initially because I don't know 100 percent of the project requirements."

Todd Lant, director of corporate IT at Blackbaud, a technology solutions provider specializing in nonprofits, recommends IT managers take a staged approach when pushing ambitious projects, one that relies on shorter milestones with metrics tied to future funding.

"If you cannot get funding for the whole project because of skepticism of deliverability or payback, ask for funding in phases," says Lant. "Each phase can have a checkpoint where [progress] is measured and funding for the next phase is approved or denied. If the business isn't happy with progress or results, there is much less risk."