IT project delivery and assurance
Governance, delivery risk, independent assessment and recovery for large programmes, for the executives and sponsors accountable for them.
Dr Darryl Carlton
Independent expertise for complex IT and AI projects.
Clear advice for leaders and legal teams on project delivery, failed-project expert evidence, AI governance and IT and AI contracting. Dr Darryl Carlton helps you understand the technology, assess the risk and make informed decisions.
Four areas of work
What I help with
Expert witness in failed IT projects
Independent technical analysis of why a project failed, what the evidence shows and how delivery was disputed, written for instructing solicitors and legal teams.
AI governance and project delivery
Turning governance principles into investment decisions, implementation, evaluation and ongoing oversight. Author of six books on AI and cybersecurity governance.
IT and AI contracting
Technical requirements, procurement, acceptance, operational responsibilities, supplier governance and delivery evidence, working alongside your legal advisers.
Who this is for
Law firms
Instructing solicitors and counsel who need a technology dispute explained plainly, the evidence organised, and an independent opinion that can be tested.
Large corporations
Boards and executives sponsoring programmes they cannot see inside, who want an honest reading of delivery risk before it becomes a dispute.
Government agencies
Public-sector sponsors of large IT and AI initiatives, where the research on why such projects fail was done and where the accountability is highest.
Why the advice is grounded
Dr Carlton's doctorate examined the causes of failure in large-scale IT projects, and his peer-reviewed research on situational incompetence and on competence versus confidence in project leadership came out of that work. He has published six books on AI and cybersecurity governance with Technics Publications, hosts the podcast AI Governance with Dr Darryl, and writes the LinkedIn newsletter Bridging the Gap. He is currently researching the consequences of project failure and the role of alternative dispute resolution at RMIT University's School of Law.
Selected work
AI Governance
Applying AI Policy and Ethics through Principles and Assessments
A guide for leaders and practitioners to governing AI through principles, ethics and structured assessments: the history and legal setting of AI, eight guiding principles with ways to uphold each, and assessment approaches for organisations.
Garbage In, Gospel Out
The Practitioner's Workbook for Transforming AI Governance
A workbook that turns AI governance from a compliance burden into a delivery discipline: mapping an organisation against an AI technical standard, an implementation methodology, procurement and contract governance, and oversight across the AI lifecycle.
Situational Incompetence: the failure of governance in the management of large scale IT projects
A qualitative study of a large public-sector IT project whose cost overrun exceeded AUD 1 billion, drawing on 181 interviews and 5,000 pages of project data. It develops a theory of situational incompetence and proposes an instrument for gauging leadership competence as project size and complexity grow.
Competence versus Confidence in IT Project Leadership and its Impact on Project Outcomes
Why do IT projects still fail when the causes are well known? Using multi-grounded theory on a major Australian IT project, this paper examines the lack of domain expertise among senior management and vendor representatives, and reads the decisions of the people involved through the Kruger-Dunning effect.
The Role of Experts in the Courtroom
Expert witnesses serve the court, not the party paying them, yet the rules differ sharply across major jurisdictions. The episode surveys those frameworks and asks how AI is beginning to reshape expert testimony.
Anatomy of Project Failure
Why large projects fail, drawing on the research behind the author's doctorate and the patterns that recur across failed IT programmes.
Discuss an engagement
Describe the situation in a few lines and I will reply personally. Email darryl.carlton@me.com or use the contact page. Enquiries are treated in confidence.