7 reasons IT teams fail to exceed your expectations

The C-suite and corporate boardroom have pinned much of their plans for success on technology.

According to the 2025 Executive Outlook report by Personiv, 78% of execs have increased technology investment or will increase it in the next six months in what researchers termed “proactive, agile responses to the current environment.”

And AI is proving to be a key area for that investment, as the KPMG 2025 Global CEO Outlook found that 71% of CEOs listed AI as a top investment priority, up from 64% in 2024, with 69% allocating 10% to 20% of their budget on AI alone.

Overall, transformation is the order of the day. Accoding to the September 2025 EY-Parthenon CEO Outlook Survey, 52% of chief executives “plan to increase investment to accelerate portfolio transformation, reflecting a recognition that adapting to shifting markets and customer expectations is no longer optional but essential for growth.”

Such expectations put pressure on IT teams to deliver innovations and transformations that drive business results — and the expectations are often that IT initiatives will exceed objectives.

That’s a tall order, one that many IT departments can’t fulfill for various reasons. Here long-serving IT leaders share seven reasons why IT teams fail to exceed expectations and how CIOs can lead their teams to overcome those challenges.

1. Too much time spent on lights-on activities

Keeping the technology engines humming smoothly, while essential, will not impress CEOs and other enterprise leaders, says Heather Leier-Murray, a research director in the CIO practice at Info-Tech Research Group.

Yet that’s where many IT teams still focus much of their attention.

The IT Trends 2025: Industry Report from Auvik, a maker of network management software, found that “58% of IT professionals shared that they spend half or more of their work week on tickets for the end-user.” It also found that 32% of surveyed IT pros cited “don’t have enough time” as a reason for not implementing wish-list items — the No. 1 reason given.

“We’re seeing that the organization — the C-suite, and the CEO particularly — is increasing expectations that IT should be working at higher levels, so leading transformations, being business partners, expanding business opportunities. They want IT to transform and expand the business,” Leier-Murray says. “And IT is not able to keep up, or exceed, with this expectation because it is spending all its time on maintenance and administration.”

Leier-Murray and others say CIOs need to use technology to transform IT processes and workflows — just as they’re doing in other business units. They should automate routine maintenance tasks, deploy AI to perform more complex processes, and simplify the tools and technologies IT staffers use as a way to streamline jobs and gain back time. Furthermore, CIOs must prioritize strategic work that delivers the most value over maintenance work that has little to no critical impact.

2. Lack of clarity on expectations

Another reason why IT teams fail to exceed expectations is that they don’t have a clear understanding of what the expectations are.

“Sometimes there is not a clear picture of what success is, and that means there are gaps in expectations because they weren’t well defined. I’ve seen that happen time and time again,” says Pegasystems CIO David Vidoni.

To gain clarity, Vidoni says IT needs to focus on the outcomes business leaders want and use business metrics to measure success.

Others offer similar advice.

“Start by measuring the right types of progress,” says Amar Aswatha, senior vice president for global business engineering at CGI, a consulting and services firm. “Progressive CIOs will ask, ‘Are we solving the right problem?’ and they’ll check back with the business often and ask, ‘Are we aligned to the same outcome?’”

Aswatha says leading CIOs also share with their IT teams the reasons for the projects and programs they’re pursuing and why the outcomes are important for the organization. “Explaining that and reiterating that is extremely important. IT teams want to know what difference it makes, and giving them the sense of purpose matters,” he says.

3. Acting more like a vendor than a partner

Nate Kurtz, CIO of Veeam Software Group, has seen some IT departments work like vendors, with CIOs and staffers taking an almost transactional approach, while others act like strategic partners, working shoulder to shoulder with business colleagues, sharing a stake in — and responsibility for — achieving a desired outcome.

Those who act like strategic partners are the ones who exceed expectations, he says.

“The CIO is a critical role in an organization today, because IT is one of the few functions that touch everyone in an organization,” he says. “CIOs can see across an organization; we can see ways to improve it. So the CIO has to frame that perspective to the IT team and other executives, that IT can help drive the organization forward.”

4. Falling short on ensuring the business does its part for success

Both sides must contribute to the IT-business partnership for it to work successfully, yet experienced CIOs say that’s not always the case. There are times when IT workers are clear on what it will take to deliver a successful product, and what they must do to exceed target outcomes, but the business does not have that same level of understanding, Vidoni says.

As an example, he points to a chatbot initiative. The technologists recognized that having certain data was essential for success, but the business unit did not seem to grasp its role in delivering that data, ensuring it was in good form, and doing so in a timely manner.

“Business may not fully understand all that needs to come together for [a technology initiative] to succeed, what needs to be brought to the table from the business team, and what IT needs to bring to the table,” he says.

The end product in such cases may “produce good results, but not spectacular results,” as was the case with the chatbot, says Vidoni, adding that he learned from that experience to outline at the outset what the business needs to do and allocate the time they need to do it — a lesson that reinforces the value of strong communication and good planning.

5. Failing to enforce effective project prioritization practices

CIOs attest to the heavy workload put on IT today.

“Everyone is juggling different projects and different priorities for different business units,” Vidoni says. “And IT leaders want to please and satisfy, and that can come out as not pushing back on requests, saying yes, and striving to make things happen. But it’s important to understand what boundaries you have, to make sure you do not overcommit, because if you’re stretched too thin, you’ll miss expectations and not have positive outcomes.”

To avoid such scenarios, Vidoni prioritizes projects aligned to enterprise objectives and has a strong discipline around capacity planning. He also makes sure team members adhere to those practices so they’re not committing IT resources to pet projects that come up in their meetings with business colleagues.

6. Trying to keep up with excessive, unrealistic expectations

“The expectations for delivery, especially with the advent of AI, are that much greater today than they were just a year ago,” says Shannon T. Wilson, vice president of IT at the University of Phoenix. “The demands for output are greater than they have ever been in the past.”

To meet those increasing expectations, Wilson says his IT department is transforming how it works, using technology — including AI — to become more effective and efficient, and is mandating training for its IT workforce.

Such moves have helped IT not only keep pace with demands but also deliver “multiples back.”

But Wilson says IT leaders also must “set the proper expectations for what their teams can deliver with the resources they have,” noting that “demand will always exceed what the capacity is to deliver.”

He says his IT department diligently tracks its work so it can accurately plan what it can deliver, ensuring the team doesn’t overpromise. And IT leaders frequently check in with business colleagues to ensure work is on track and communicate when it’s not, such as when the October AWS outage threw work plans out of whack.

Wilson says such moves have helped ensure expectations are high but achievable.

“We’ve tried to shrink all the places where we can get disconnected between expectations and deliverables,” he says.

7. IT staffers don’t think like the business

“IT teams are used to working for their group’s objectives — upgrades to technologies, reduce support complications, time taken to provide enhancements — and answering to IT management,” says Niranjan Ramsunder, CTO of UST, which provides IT services, consulting and engineering. “Now they almost always answer to business stakeholders who fund most initiatives.”

This presents challenges for some IT workers as it requires them to use “new skills which are not always available in current teams,” he says.

They need to understand business ROI and priorities, for example, he says, and realize that “doing a rollout for a new feature in a CRM on time and under budget is not enough.”

And they must know and work to the speed of market expectations, he adds.

Ramsunder advises CIOs to take several steps to remove such roadblocks to delivery excellence: familiarize IT staffers with the metrics that the business uses to measure success; train IT teams to use AI tools, open-source components, and integration to increase their speed; and prioritize IT projects based on business impact.

“It is critical to develop a conscious training program on the business view of IT capabilities and measurements as well as a new org structure incorporating AI agents,” he says, adding that IT teams must also develop FinOps capabilities along with core skills to leverage LLMs and agents.

“CIOs and the IT teams that report to them need to enable the right kind of tools and framework for onboarding new AI tools quickly,” he adds. “In addition, they need to cultivate in their teams a ‘so what’ mindset urging them to think about the business value of their work and actively participate in creating a differentiated business rather than simply delivering to what is being asked for.”