Phenominon of little bit more...

Only 16.2% Projects are completed on time as reported by it-cortex.com

Most of the Project Managers even know why software development projects get late. Speak to executives about software development projects and they have ZERO degree of confidence that software development projects in their organisation will finish on time and budget.

It's almost accepted reality - of course Software Projects get delayed. Conversations like "Working on software project? cool - how is it going? (with chuckle). Late? How much? 3 months? That's not too bad. Well, what do you expect, its a software development.

A key difference in those who are successful is lack of tolerance for any requests to the addition to the scope. Most failed projects are victims of what I call 'Phenomenon of Little Bit more...'.

Tolerance of adding that little bit more functionality on part of the project manager or the project sponsor or other stakeholders, without regard is the key contributor in these failure.

Most organizations and teams attempt to control the scope by several processes and implementation of methodologies like PRINCE2 or MSP if within larger program environment. However, a common mistake made is a weak foundation. There are certain fundamentals that need to be in place for the assurance that the Project will be finished on time and on budget with the defined scope.

A question is what are the fundamentals that must be in place? It will require thinking outside the box and not come up with usual answers like ill defined scope, poor communication and change control blaa blaa bla. Its lot more fundamental than that.

Well... definitely something to investigate!