15 Ways To Screw Up An IT Project

Project management experts discuss sure-fire ways to delay or derail a project and--more importantly--how you can avoid these common project management pitfalls.

Paul Simon famously sang that there must be 50 ways to leave your lover. Similar could be said (if not sung) regarding projects: There must be 50 ways to screw up your IT projects. Indeed, ask IT executives and project management experts, as CIO.com did, and they will rattle off dozens of reasons why projects go astray. For the sake of brevity, however, we are starting with the top 15 ways to derail a project--and how to avoid these project management pitfalls.

1. Having a poor or no statement of work. "I've seen many projects encounter troubles due to the lack of a well-defined project scope," says Bryan Fangman, senior project manager at Borland, a Micro Focus Company.