SINGAPORE--Break it down into smaller chunks so each piece of an IT project can be more successfully achieved, according to the CFO of a Japanese bank.

Speaking at IDC's FinTech Asia 2007 conference Thursday, Rahul Gupta, senior managing executive officer and chief financial officer at Japan's Shinsei Bank, said technology decision makers must have a "granular view of profitability" in order to lead an IT implementation toward success.

As the average life span of a CIO is shorter than the average life span of an IT project, Gupta noted that IT managers need to establish "bite-size" deliverables for each project to ensure it runs successfully.

According to Anup Kumar Das, Citibank's managing director of international decision and touch point technologies for global consumer banking, senior executives should also look at three areas--project management, change management and program management--in order to ensure a project runs successfully.

Oon Wee Jong, executive vice president and CIO of Maybank in Malaysia, noted that 70 percent of IT projects fail while 40 percent of projects are unable to deliver what was promised when the business case for its implementation was determined.

To ensure projects succeed, Oon noted that companies should ensure there is "transparency and accountability" in how a project is managed and that everyone is "communicating in a language that the business understands".