Here is a question that may go right to the heart of major IT initiatives in government and the private sector: should we assume that all technology projects will somehow, and to some degree, go wrong at the first attempt?

How much heartache and vitriol would IT leaders be spared if the answer to that question were “yes”?

Of course, you should scoff at such a suggestion. But look at two high-profile cases in point that Computing features this week.

The Ministry of Justice was forced to halt and scale down a project to join up the criminal justice system, attracting severe criticism from MPs along the way. The revised project is now starting to go live and there is much more optimism for its success.

British Gas bet its future on a new multimillion-pound billing system, whose subsequent failures were blamed for it losing thousands of customers to rivals. Since the initial problems, the situation has markedly improved.

Undaunted by failure, both organisations have opted to try, try again.

A similar process is underway in the NHS, after the task of rolling out electronic patient records proved, at first attempt, to be far more daunting than anticipated.

So, in such huge and complex projects, is it reasonable to assume a degree of initial failure? Clearly not ­ the aim has to be to get it right first time, every time, or else how can anyone in IT justify their critical role in the future of their organisation?

But perhaps such examples suggest that IT leaders are failing in one very important aspect of modern business ­ managing expectations.

In IT, we have all rightly promoted technology as central to corporate success, but how many IT managers can honestly say they have not, on occasion, over promised?

In so many situations in work and life, the cause of conflict is not f ailur e, but the failure to manage expectation. When planning technology projects, it is a lesson IT leaders should remember.