Topic starter
12/06/2026 9:05 pm
TL;DR: IGA projects fail when organisations underestimate identity complexity, neglect stakeholder alignment, under-resource implementation, and struggle with integration and change management, according to Zluri, while Gartner says over 50% of IGA deployments miss functional, budgetary, or timing commitments. IGA failure is less about a single project misstep than about whether governance can absorb modern identity sprawl.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Zluri: “Why does The IGA Project Fail? Top 8 Reasons”.
Key questions
Q: Where do IGA projects usually fail in practice?
A: They fail at the handoff points between governance and operations.
Q: Why do IGA programmes create compliance risk when they are poorly scoped?
A: Poorly scoped IGA programmes leave gaps between policy and actual access behaviour.
Q: What are the signs that an IGA programme is out of fit for the organisation?
A: Common signs include overdue access reviews, repeated exception handling, delayed offboarding, and a growing dependency on a few specialists to keep basic workflows moving.
Practitioner guidance
- Define measurable IGA outcomes first Set success criteria for provisioning accuracy, certification completion, SoD enforcement, and offboarding timeliness before selecting workflows or integrations.
- Map authoritative identity sources Identify the HR, directory, application, and SaaS sources that will drive identity attributes and entitlements, then assign ownership for each source of truth.
- Build stakeholder ownership into governance Name business approvers, access owners, and certification reviewers explicitly so approvals and access decisions do not depend on informal support.
Bottom line: IGA projects fail when governance, ownership, and identity data are not aligned before rollout.
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This topic was modified 6 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
12/06/2026 10:56 pm
IGA failure is usually a governance design problem, not a software failure. The article shows that projects collapse when identity data, role ownership, approvals, and lifecycle processes are not aligned before implementation begins. That is a programme design issue, because the control model cannot be made reliable after the fact. Practitioners should treat IGA as an operating model decision, not a procurement milestone.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Nearly 60% of IT leaders cite restrictive cost and complexity as a weakness of legacy identity governance, according to the 2025 State of Identity Governance Report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations prioritise access reviews or role design first in IGA?
A: Role design should come first when access is poorly structured, because reviews cannot stabilise a broken role model. If roles are already broadly sound but entitlement drift is the issue, then access reviews can be prioritised earlier. The right sequence depends on whether the bigger problem is role architecture or control enforcement.
👉 Read our full editorial: Why IGA projects fail and what that means for identity governance
This post was modified 6 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group