... Similarly, projects considered failures according to traditional IT metrics may wind up being
successes because despite cost, time or specification problems, the system is loved by its target
audience or provides unexpected value. For example, at a financial services company, a new
system... was six months late and cost more than twice the original estimate (final cost was
$5.7 million). But the project ultimately created a more adaptive organization (after 13
months) and was judged to be a great success??”the company had a $33 million reduction in
write-off accounts, and the reduced time-to-value and increased capacity resulted in a 50
percent increase in the number of concurrent collection strategy tests in production.*
Beyond Deadlines
There has to be more to success than meeting deadlines... but what?
When I was a kid, I was happy just to play around. I loved the challenge of programming. When I got
a program to work, it was a major victory. Back then, even a program that didn??™t work was a success
of some sort, as long as I had fun writing it. My definition of success centered on personal rewards.
As I gained experience, my software became more complicated and I often lost track of how it worked.
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