A bank CIO once told us every project was on time or coming in early

I worked for a vendor at a bank in the early 2000s. We raised the issue of how many programs and projects were off-course in an already-planned meeting with a CIO. The CIO said we were off base and that

 We have 320 software projects in flight - 315 on time - 5 will be early

The reality was that everything went to production in Q4. The next year's Q1 was filled with production fixes. I'm pretty sure the real story was


Real-time information radiators have given a different impression

Question

  1. Did the executive know what was happening but was defending their teams?
  2. Was the true health hidden from the executive?
  3. Did the company not have accurate metrics?
  4. Does anyone believe that all their software projects were on time or early?
    1. Maybe they just keep adjusting dates until they are accurate.
    2. It was not a feature driven agile shop that delivered incrementally
  5. Were bonuses the primary drivers for this viewpoint?

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Created 2023 06 

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