premise: The project was ambitious in its size, complexity, triparty nature, and in its pioneering of the Private Finance Initiative. This difficulty was unavoidable and contributed to the projects failure. However, a more prudent estimation of the unknown difficulties and timescales would have enabled the Department to better prepare for the project, and increase its chance of success. In December 1997 XSoft indicated they needed more time to complete the project, which should have been inevitable. If the Department knew from the start how long the project would take, it is questionable whether they would have considered inception; especially considering the implications of delay on overall profitability for the venture.
hypothesis: If more care had been put into estimating the difficulties, it is less likely the project would have failed.