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ARTICLE · 04 JANUARY 2024

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Complex Tech Program Leadership Series: Groundhog Day – Why Do Complex Tech Programs Keep Failing And How To Get Them Right?

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For many years, complex tech programs have continued to fail too often, ruining investments, damaging organizations and ending promising careers.

GermanyTechnology
Gerrit Buschhorn
Gerrit Buschhorn
Jochen Gottschalk
Jochen Gottschalk
Tim Gray
Tim Gray
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For many years, complex tech programs have continued to fail too often, ruining investments, damaging organizations and ending promising careers. There does not seem to be a learning curve.

To be clear: technology transformations are very hard to get right. A quick scan of the available research shows a consistently high failure rate of around 7/10 to 9/10, with Forbes stating that 84% of technology transformations fail to some degree, and that 50% just didn't go right at all. In our experience, the rate of failure increases with the size of ambition, investment, and complexity. Given each new year brings new technologies to master, this trend is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

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