Anyone involved in IT projects has probably felt the sting of a technical success that is also a business failure. Some may be in denial, but the reality is that this happens frequently, and in most cases it's due to a common set of underlying causes. The primary causes for a technical success and business failure (TSBF) can be blamed on not having an intelligent and grounded change management strategy.

What do I mean by technical success and business failure? Often the measure of failure -- or its close cousin, mediocrity -- is weak adoption by the intended users, who don't see the value in the technology. Often, the political consequences from an IT and business perspective are that no one will readily acknowledge the emperor's lack of clothing. Nevertheless, we still all walk away from the experience angry, disappointed, frustrated, and asking why.

[Digital initiatives are where the action is. Here are three companies that made them work: How IT Can Spur Digital Innovation.]

Here are the top six causes and corresponding fixes, followed by some real-world examples of tech successes that ended in a business failure -- or a failure followed by a business success.

Now let's explore how these technical successes can play out in some real-world examples.

No. 1: Global chip maker

Technical success: A global chip manufacturer deployed a system for enterprise use, with diverse language and localization support requirements.

Business failure: Pencils never went down, despite the executive sponsor pushing for it. Old and new users continually weighed in, preventing even the first release from finishing. It was launched for global use without substantive pilot deployment.

No. 2: City Year (education nonprofit)

Technical success: Welles Hatch, CIO of City Year, a national education nonprofit based in Boston, selected a new fundraising tool from Round Corner, which featured a collection of business configurations representing state-of-the-art best practices guidelines for campaign management and automation.

Business failure: Welles and his team leaned too heavily on established processes, which were significantly different from the Round Corner best practices. The project deteriorated, and Welles had to put it on hold until the team gained consensus on the right business implementation.

Business success: The project pause made Welles a tad unpopular at City Year, but it let the organization bring in consultants, who recommended many best practices that were well aligned with the Round Corner configurations. City Year improved its processes and got the project on track.

No. 3: Global financial institution

Technical success: Deborah Reilly, the division chief for information and knowledge management at a global financial institution, built a portal to show information on a country from multiple sources, recent documents, current staff assigned to work on the country, latest published data, last and next mission, and news feeds from outside. Technically, it worked perfectly.

Business failure: Adoption was very low for three reasons: There was no clear business owner (done by committee); information producers actually want some control over which documents appear (important versus recent); and there was no demand from consumers for this information.

Business success: The system did have one feature that was a success. It let users share documents for review and approval without using email. That sped up work -- Department A could simply agree with Department B's comments, for example. Reilly cites an added benefit: "Contextual information on how we came to our advice is captured and reusable."

Meredith Henry, director of planning and strategic change at McDonald's, says there are four stages for people to adopt new information systems: generating awareness of the change; understanding (the "why now?"); committing to make the shift; and engaging to adopt the change. Too often, Henry says, technology projects try to go from awareness to engagement, "skipping the two most critical steps necessary for true adoption: understanding and commitment."

If the world wasn't changing, we might continue to view IT purely as a service organization, and ITSM might be the most important focus for IT leaders. But it's not, it isn't and it won't be -- at least not in its present form. Get the Research: Beyond IT Service Management report today (free registration required).