UK gov skills shortage jeopardising IT projects
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PAC issues damning report MPs have said poor skills at senior level are jeopardising ICT projects.â¦
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A new survey by IAG Consulting finds that among two-thirds of companies polled, it is &quot;improbable&quot; that an IT project will be considered an overall success due to inadequately or improperly gathered business requirements.Fifty percent of these companies&#39; projects could be termed &quot;runaways,&quot; marked by at least two of these three factors: Taking more than 180 percent of estimated time to be completed, going over 160 percent of the established budget, and delivering less than 70 percent of the desired capabilities.The other 32 percent of the companies surveyed enjoy a &quot;probable&quot; chance of success for IT project, according to the study, which surveyed more than 100 midsized and Fortune 1000 companies in North America.&quot;The numbers here came back far, far bigger than we ever expected,&quot; said Keith Ellis, vice president of IAG, which is based in the U.S. and Canada. The independent company focuses on business requirements analysis.&quot;One big reason that really stands out for me is that people tend to look at requirements as a document, not as a process. If you do that, you&#39;re going to fail,&quot; Ellis said. &quot;Here&#39;s one of those cases where the means is as or more important as the end.&quot;Good requirements analysis can ensure a project&#39;s scale is minimized, but not at the expense of meeting a business&#39; needs, according to the study. Another hallmark sees changes to requirements occurring infrequently, because the proper level of consensus has already been reached.The study weighed development projects, which cost at least $250,000 and involved &quot;significant new functionality,&quot; as opposed to matters like maintenance or a rollout of new client machines. The projects consisted of either internally developed software or application implementations. Their average scope was $3 million, according to IAG.The damage was worst when non-IT business analysts were in charge of the requirements. Those projects came in at nearly double their budgets and took more than 245 percent of their allotted time, according to IAG.When IT workers managed the requirements analysis, the results were only slightly better, with budget overruns at 163 percent and time at 172 percent.The best results came when business and IT worked together on defining requirements. There, budgets ran an average of 143 percent and time, 159 percent.The study suggested many companies are working on an ad-hoc basis. More than half &quot;did not have professional, trained staff dedicated to the function of getting requirements, and the vast majority view the process of getting requirements to be inefficient,&quot; the report states.Companies should form a &quot;center of excellence&quot; for business-requirements gathering managed by both IT and business employees, the study concluded.IAG conducted the study with the help of analyst Michael O&#39;Neil and Info-Tech Research Group over the past several months, Ellis said.
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Readers offer their own ideas on what should be included in a list of dead or dying skills for IT professionals.
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IT managers are struggling to make sure their organizations comply with a raft of regulations on lean IT budgets, according to Open Text CEO Tom Jenkins.
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Rollin' on, but not rollin' out Nine years after the project began, the government is still failing to put a completion date on the roll out of the IT system for magistrates' courts.â¦
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Strong job outlook offset by skills shortage The outlook for jobs in the European technology sector is good but the spectre of outsourcing looms ominously, according to a new report.â¦
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BBC education correspondent Mike Baker assesses Gordon Brown's attempt to address the UK skills crisis.
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One year after Hurricane Katrina, many IT managers in New Orleans have shored up their systems. But they still face a shortage of available workers and an overload of fatigue and stress.
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
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DECEMBER 08, 2004  - Some 40,000 computers in the UK&#39;s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were unable to access their network last month when an IT technician erroneously installed a software upgrade.
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Upgrade waiting list just too long The government's vision of an integrated computer system for the NHS is coming apart at the seams as NHS trusts are to start looking for alternative IT suppliers, The Guardian reports.â¦
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No surprise, there A think tank has called for 'root and branch change' in public services, following its damning report on ICT outsourcingâ¦
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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's  government suffered new embarrassment over missing data on  Monday when it revealed one of its contractors had lost the  details of 3 million learner drivers.
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A third of IT managers have admitted that they have &quot;no idea what to expect&quot; when deploying Microsoft&#39;s Windows XP Service Pack 2, new research has claimed.
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Recommendations on plugging the UK's skills gaps are to be outlined in a government-commissioned report.
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Economists say government needs to support and train IT workers who have lost jobs to offshore outsourcing.
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Over three-quarters of doctors say they are unhappy about the planned new IT system for the NHS.