Escalation in IT projects: can we afford to quit or do we have to continue?

Abstract

Many information technology (IT) projects fail. These projects are not within budget, not on time or do not deliver what was promised. Failures in IT projects are more common than failures in any other aspect of modern business. Whereas a large number of projects are obvious failures, some are not. A model of escalation-increasing commitment to a failing course of action-is used to analyze and explain one type of project failure, namely, those projects that seem to take on a life of their own, wasting scarce resources and in many cases never reaching the objectives they were set to fulfil. The paper argues that escalation as a cause of IT project failure has received too little attention in both practice and education. A small case is used to illustrate escalation in an IT project.