I always suspected my article a fortnight ago entitled “Why it’s time to sack failing IT staff” may prompt a few irate letters. One correspondent even suggested that it was also time to sack more IT journalists, or at least the ones who “write lazy sensationalist articles by quoting statistics that have fallen into their lap out of context rather than using real experience or undertaking research to get real-life facts to underpin their opinions”.

Ouch.

Despite the critical reaction to the piece, I’m still convinced that complacency – as evidenced by the recent Economist survey that found that over half of

European IT professionals feel there is no risk to their job security if they do not hit project deadlines – is a major factor in the UK’s appallingly high IT project failure rate.

My correspondents’ central complaint can be boiled down to the age-old moan that it is all the business’s fault.

As one put it: “Projects fail as much because of poor sponsorship, unrealistic time-scales or insufficient budgets, as from project manager’s incompetence.”

However, people from all sectors have to deal with unrealistic time-scales or budgets, and that does not stop them feeling nervous about their job when they miss targets.

Many good IT managers have failed projects on their CV because of poor support from the business, but to argue that complacency has little role to play in failing projects is just the kind of thinking that breeds the self-satisfied attitude evident in the survey’s findings.

Another correspondent had a more reasoned objection, pointing out that the focus on hitting targets evident in our American cousins – only 22 percent of whom are confident of their job security after missing a deadline – can be detrimental to project quality and lead to hidden costs. However, a well-managed IT project should make staff accountable for both hitting deadlines and delivering quality.

What both these correspondents illustrate, however, is just how tricky successful IT project management is. But that does not mean that there are not solutions to almost all of the common failings that afflict projects. If you have the right resources, targets and monitoring mechanisms in place, there can be genuine accountability when things go wrong.

Without greater levels of professional accountability the unacceptably high project failure rates that dog the industry will continue. To suggest otherwise is simply delusional and does the industry no favours whatsoever.