PIFs for Projects: Measuring Performance Impact Factors for ICT Projects

ICT Projects have a bad reputation: they often exceed budget or change scope. It holds especially when writing new software is involved, however, writing mobile apps, joint & distributed software development across organizations, integration of new services, sizing maintenance or ICT portfolio projects is also affected. Project management is needed but without proper estimation methods and tools it is limited to managing the budget overrun. For the economy, this is a serious blocker, since ICT is the major motor for economic growth. Work breakdown structure fails because it is part of the project to find out what work is needed, expert estimation fails because experts cannot remember previous decisions and their estimates suffer from important variations. Without proper budgeting, ICT projects carry enormous risks for the financial stability for the sponsors of an ICT project.