Work with a cross-departmental, executive steering committee annually to identify business goals, and develop only those projects that have direct business value and an executive sponsor. Then meet monthly to reassess business goals and project priorities. For every stage of a project that is under way, identify key time, cost, and business value metrics to prevent problems from blowing up the project. Once everybody is aligned, many different strategies work. Behind that is having standards and not trying to please everybody that wants to buy every Tinkertoy out there.
Efficiency comes with discipline.
An efficient IT department is well-organized. But in most companies, when the year is done, more than half the work completed was ad hoc work and wasn't subjected to any justification process, experts say. Also, once the projects are under way, those involved lose sight of the original benefits and focus on costs. Most companies justify projects based on value, but they manage toward squeezing IT costs down, and they forget about how to get the value. Many experts advise reducing project time by limiting functionality to the most critical items and reducing changes to requirements.