Mark Samuels makes a good case for IT leaders fighting for good projects (Forget the downturn and fight for innovation, Knowledge blog, knowledge.computing.co.uk).

However, creating a general contingency budget of 10 per cent might not be the most effective strategy. IT projects are often complex, and 10 per cent might be too little or too much, depending on the project.

Targeted risk management places contingent spending exactly where it needs to be.

For example, a current project is certain to run into a political debate about the hosting of a new knowledge base. If it goes one way, we face a certain cost increase of eight per cent. As the decision is on a knife edge, we should revise the budget upwards for that deliverable. If common sense prevails, we are under budget.

On the positive side, there is an opportunity that development of some new classification processes will cut the development and testing cost by 25 per cent. Do we declare that to be the case? Not until we are certain.

So let’s be pinpointed and targeted with our projects, and defend our corner with justifiable pride.

Andrew Vermes