Why Projects Fail

The data on project success rates are alarming. According to the Standish Group's CHAOS Report, based on biennial surveys of software project outcomes, about 75 percent of all software projects are delivered late or fail. The data also show that since 2002, the rate of successful project completion has dropped significantly.

Delayed projects are not problematic simply because they are late. On a late project, significant planned functionality is often discarded in an effort to stay on schedule and keep costs down. So the average schedule overrun of about 120 percent and average cost overrun of 100 percent shown in Figure 1-1 are significantly understated. Completing projects often takes more than twice as long and costs twice as much as we estimate! How can it be that we haven't made progress in delivering software on time or under budget? In 1981, Barry Boehm provided a seven-step approach to estimating software projects in Software Engineering Economics. Yet most projects today do not use even this level of discipline in preparing estimates.

Steve McConnell, author of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, writes, "The industry data show that the software industry has an underestimation problem. Before we can make our estimates more accurate, we need to start making the estimates bigger. That is the key challenge for many organizations." Industry expert Capers Jones writes that the root cause of project failure is poor project management, not technical issues or the competence and ability of technical personnel.

The failure to adequately plan using useful and effective measures is the root cause of project failure. This book will enable you to save a failing project. Even better, it will enable you to manage projects while reducing the risk of failure.

Key Factors Leading to Failure

While many factors lead to the failure of a project, in the authors' experience, a few specific, easily recognizable factors signal serious problems that jeopardize project success:

* Poorly defined requirements

* Scope creep

* Stakeholders have different expectations

* Stakeholders have unrealistic expectations

* There is no real need or demand for the product

* There is a lack of user involvement in the project

* Change management is lacking or ineffective

* Poor quality control

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