7 December 2015

Five Drivers behind Software Project Failures

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Recent estimates place the global impact of IT failure as $3 trillion annually. An extraordinary number, but nonetheless a real hit on the bottom line of businesses around the world requiring careful thought and planning.

Software Project Failures

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Time and again organisations are making the same mistakes, and in most instances these are easily rectifiable. Here we outline five of the most common failure drivers and some thoughts on how to avoid them:

Over-Commitment and Under-Delivery

How many times have you seen a business leader promise delivery dates in public without substantive analysis underlying a detailed, and achievable project plan? In turn this can lead to:

Unrealistic Schedules and Personnel Cost Increases

The natural project manager response is, of course, to up-weight staffing. Unfortunately this can also mean the requirement to find the extra costs of either moving staff from other projects or buying them in from external sources.

Emotion as a Guiding Light

With careers and reputations on the line it can be easy to utilise emotion in negotiation and ignore cold, hard numbers. Strong two-way communication based on real data such as that provided by third party automated software testing services can ensure there is no detrimental impact on the project from over-wrought discussions.

The Afterthought of Testing

How many times have companies hit the headlines for IT failures when what could have prevented all those negative column inches was simply further testing? Testing often gets compressed and yet it is at this stage that the most impact can often be felt on the end-user experience. Automated software testing services can often assist greatly in this and outsourcing to a business such as http://www.mytesters.com/ or others can lead to impartial, thorough results and a significant reduction in at least one area of Project Manager stress.

IT Can Fix Everything

It is a common-held belief that IT projects can fix everything. Unfortunately, an IT project can never make up for a lack of process or a lack of thinking – if only it were that easy.

Of course, IT projects fail for many reasons. If any of those outlined have caused a moment of reflection maybe it is time to consider the role you play within your organisation along with our handy hints – it may just save your project!