Why do Software Projects Fail?

A free video tutorial from Maged Koshty
IEEE Certified Instructor - PMP - ISTQB CTAL - PMI-ACP
4.3 instructor rating •
16 courses •
95,058 students
Learn more from the full course
Certified ISTQB Agile Tester Foundation Level Exam - UpdatedAn online course to Be an ISTQB Agile certified tester and learn testing techniques in various Agile methodologies
03:44:21 of on-demand video • Updated January 2019
- Understand The Fundamentals of Agile Software Development
- Understand The Differences between Testing in Traditional and Agile Approaches
- Master The Roles and skills of a tester in Agile Projects
- Get Familiar with Agile testing processess, tools, techniques and methods
- Assess product quality risks within an Agile project
- Estimate testing effort based on iteration content and quality risks
- Understand the Roles and skills of a tester in Agile Projects
English
As per a recent study, 70% of
organizations have suffered at least one project failure in the
past 12 months, and 50% of them indicated that their large software
projects failed to constantly achieve the objectives they
had set out at the beginning. Being able to identify the causes of
failure and categorizing them can lead us to lower failure rates in future projects.
You need to keep in mind that there’s only a 6% chance your
project would be successful and by successful we mean the projects are
delivered on time, on budget, and have a satisfactory implementation. A 52%
chance that your projects would be challenged which means it could be
over budget, late, and/or have an unsatisfactory implementation and a sad
42% chance your software would fail, either canceled prior to completion
or discarded after implementation. So the question arises “why do software
projects fail?” if we could know the answer to this question, there’s a big chance we might
avoid having a troubled software project. The possibility of software projects failing
can be attributed to different reasons The top 10 reasons that
lead to failure of large software projects in no specific order are Miscalculated Time and Budget Frames Clients are looking to get
everything quick and cheap. This leads us to
agree to a rather shorter, unrealistic and non-negotiable time
frame for the project delivery at very low rates. Was it Needed At All? This is rather a surprising
reason which attributes to a software project failure.
A classic example as mentioned in a report by a
leading Consulting firm shows The FAA Advanced Automation
System (1981-1994) The Cost of the project is $3.7 billion;
peak staffing of 2000 persons; - Nothing was delivered; no code was ever used.
The reason: nobody wanted it in the first place or in other words
there was no business case for it Lack of Communication Another key aspect is the failure to set
up effective communication channels between stakeholders. Developers, testers,
customers, users,…everyone. No End-user Involvement Failure to find and engage the
right users to participate in the software development
process is extremely dangerous. Unfocused Executive Sponsors: Higher managers didn’t provide the
needed support to the project Failing to See the Bigger Picture - In UK, officials called
off what was considered to be the largest public
IT project of all time. It was a project which
was intended to provide electronic health records
for all of its citizens. After 10 years and costing an estimated around
19 billion USD the authorities concluded that the project was not fit to provide
the modern services it was intended to. Chasing Technology Some managers try to use whatever
the latest available technology for their ongoing projects. This leads to
the failure of the whole system, or failing to complete the project on time.
Moreover, these latest technologies may not even be mature enough to
have been used in the first place. Development Downtime Software bugs, environmental
factors, infrastructure or software failures, viruses, hackers,
hardware failures. All these could contribute
to the unplanned extension of the development
downtime of the project Lack of Periodic Assessment Lack of client and developer
assessments, and failure in smartly establishing milestone points
leads to improper assessments. finally, and not surprising,
Lack of Quality Testing In most projects, the importance given
to coding isn't given to testing. Casual testing or testing under
non-real time environments contribute to testing failures. Well, I hope that this makes
sense and I know there are different other reasons
that can contribute to software project faiures so
let us know look why other types of projects don't
fail as software project in other words,
why software projects are different? Thank You