The best way to avoid the spiral is to invent new ways to declare success, Scott says. "If you missed a big day, you have to reinvent what success now means. If you have a budget overrun, go back and look at ROI," he says. You're still gaining this much and saving this much to get this system in."

Sidebar

Please don't call them megaprojects!

Scott Griffin, CIO at The Boeing Co., balks at the term megaproject. "We don't do, don't want and don't intend to do megaprojects," Griffin says. "My experience is the bigger the project, the less chance it has to succeed." That's a daunting reality, considering that Boeing is undergoing a major transition to simplify business processes, including a plan to go from 3,100 systems to 500 common systems built around six lean business models.

Griffin's rule of thumb: If it can't be done in nine months, the project is too big. Instead, he strings together a series of IT projects with clear deliverables. What's more, "you usually hurt people by pulling them out of their jobs for more than a year and sticking them on a megaproject because they lose the blessing of the customers they're supporting," he explains.