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Track 2000
Problem 5 - The costs and all the costs
Finally, the long term emphasis on monitoring, tracking and recording costs has resulted in many project teams hiding the real costs of projects.
As observed by Capers Jones [1996] and Thomsett [op cit] many IT and business projects covertly "blow" budgets through unpaid and unrecorded hard work. Our research confirms Caper's findings that projects are typically 30-50% over cost as a result of unplanned evening and weekend work and that the formal project cost tracking systems often do not record this cost. Our group has also identified similar covert cost blowouts in the effort required by business people in project-related activities such as requirements specification, testing, conversion of data, documentation and job redesign. As a result, many of on time and in budget projects have indeed failed to meet the estimated budget though the formal cost tracking process indicated that they had met budget.