(William T. Budde is vice president of sales and marketing for Instec)

The annals of IT history are littered with project failures. The Standish Group, which has been collecting data on IT development projects since 1985, consistently reports that only about 30 percent of projects are successful, which is defined as on budget, on time, and with all planned features. Annual estimates of "failed" projects run about 25 percent, with about 45 percent "challenged"—inundated with cost or time overruns or not delivering the desired business functionality.

The cost of these failures is staggering, with estimates ranging from $50 to $75 billion annually. The Harvard Business Review, which studied the cost of IT project failure, reported that as many as one in six projects are "black swans" that fail spectacularly, with cost overruns of 200 percent or more and schedule overages of at least 70 percent. Those losses impact the bottom line, and some are severe enough to drive companies into bankruptcy or out of existence.