Project managers say business leaders are increasingly urging them to cut corners to deliver needed functionality on time. For instance, one IT manager at a Midwestern manufacturer says he's being pressured by senior business leaders to rush an ERP implementation by bypassing critical business processes.

"There's always a lot of pressure" from executives to take shortcuts on IT projects, says Ken McLennan, senior vice president of business solutions at Fujitsu Consulting in Edison, N.J.

He says project managers must be good facilitators and help business executives understand the risks of cutting corners. "If companies are seen making mistakes and that gets publicized, that could hurt their share price, so there's a tremendous balancing act going on," McLennan says.

Project managers and other IT executives say they've taken steps to strike a balance between the need for speed and adequate testing and quality control. Eighteen months ago, The E.W. Scripps Co. established "an extremely abbreviated" project life-cycle methodology, called FastTrack, says Oscar de Jongh, managing director of the project management office at the Cincinnati-based media conglomerate.

With the FastTrack approach, a project's scope is laid out in a one- or two-paragraph e-mail message, followed by a checklist of repeatable, auditable processes that project teams must follow, such as defining project requirements, estimating resources and testing, says de Jongh.