The only way I’ve seen real progress is by embracing Agile—not only as a software development method, but as a paradigm for how to manage the entire project or change, from governance to risk to stakeholder engagement. Years ago, I found a powerful lens in Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, which taught me to treat IT projects as complex systems, not as complicated ones. Very recently, reading Bent Flyvbjerg’s 2025 paper, “The Uniqueness of IT Cost Risk: A Cross-Group Comparison of 23 Project Types,” I was struck by how deeply the data confirms this view.
