Analysis of a range of major administrative IT projects has lead to a surprising conclusion:
 
The owners' often unconscious choice of what the book calls "project model", appears to be a key factor, separating successful projects from failures.

Two project models dominate. At first glance the differences between them seem small and unimportant, but analysis reveals that they are of critical importance to the need for resources, the manageability of the project and the roles and conditions of all parties involved.

In a non-technical language the book describes how the two project models operate and explains the hidden mechanisms of organizational culture leading to an unfortunate preference of mature public and private organizations' for the least manageable of the two project models.