These stories of failure, but skew the reader simply because there are very few companies that can bid on and attempt to manage projects of this scale. This article could easily be written to focus on the failure of sweeping, enormous, poorly-thought out projects that suffer changing visions and scope, rotating project managers, and evolving systems ... that IBM happens to bid on and execute poorly.<p>Small projects are better focused, cost less, are easier to understand, and therefore succeed more frequently (or fail more silently). It's big projects, frequently proposed and conceived by governments or enormous industrial conglomerates that are poorly thought-out, improperly managed, and suffer the worst of project management incompetence or hubris/excess. But who bids on that kind of project? Big companies like IBM. Let's be fair, they don't just bid on them, they also coax them into being, but my point stands: if you want to fail big, you've got to dream big. This isn't a defense of IBM, who deserves to own the shame of talking big but being unable to actually deliver. But it is a reminder that the project designers get equal blame for these sweeping, grandiose, visionary catastrophes.