Many enterprises are plagued with underperforming IT projects. A recent Info-Tech survey explored the differences between successful and unsuccessful projects in terms of product evaluation and selection. Seven statistically significant factors emerged. Use these factors as guidelines for reviewing existing processes and for establishing new ones.

The Good, the Bad, and the Hardware Vendor

The survey collected responses from almost 2,000 respondents representing companies of all sizes from a variety of different industries. The respondents provided information on their experiences with major IT projects such as VoIP, Virtualization, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Business Intelligence (BI). Info-Tech also collected data on the success of these projects in terms of business benefits, competitive advantage, budget, and schedule. These metrics were combined to establish an overall project success score.

Info-Tech compared the patterns of product evaluation and implementation of 314 companies with successful projects (see Table 1) to the patterns of 279 companies with underperforming...