What does the story of the BBC’s failed Digital Media Initiative suggest to you about the importance of carefully managing not only the project, but the “message” of the project? That is, why is

“benefits management” critical for project success? The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recently announced the cancellation of a major Information Technology

(IT) project intended to update their vast broadcast operations. The project, called the Digital Media Initiative (DMI), was originally budgeted at £81.7 million

($140 million) and was developed to eliminate the outdated filing systems and use of old-fashioned analog videotapes with their expensive archival storage. The BBC is one of the world’s largest and most widely recognized news and media organizations; it is publicly funded and under British government oversight. The DMI project was intended to save the organization millions annually by eliminating the cost of expensive and outdated storage facilities, while moving all media content to a modern, digital format. As an example of a large-scale IT project, the plan for the DMI involved media asset management, archive storage and retrieval systems, and media sharing capabilities.