While software development is a type of engineering, there is an apparent disparity between the percentages of engineering projects that fail and software engineering projects that fail. Statistically speaking major engineering project have a failure rate between 10% and 30% based on personal experience as a retired US Army civil engineer. That is in stark contrast to software engineering, where three years ago the failure rate for software development was bouncing around between 60% and 80% and today it is not much better. This paper will address why projects fail or the root cause of that failure. Then we will look at reviewing the twelve warning signs that identify trouble in a project. Finally we will look at best practices to prevent failure of software engineering projects. Keywords: software failure, technology project management, preventing software development failure. As a United States Army Civil Engineer with over 20 years of project management experience and as the Construction Operations Sergeant supervised Task force Eagle in Bosnia, where 150 personnel constructed 5 projects totaling over 150 million dollars and making the transition from that career in engineering to a project server administrator and project manager for Microsoft, deploying their enterprise project management software globally for them, qualifies me to write this paper from firsthand experience, but I also have researched and provided documentation in support of these views also. Having an insider’s prospective on this subject which I love called project management has shown me different projects in civil engineering that have failed because of major mistakes. Major civil engineering project failure is 10 to 30% statistically and although I h... ... middle of paper ... ...roject-failure-4681213.html John, J. J. (unknown). Tips for Avoiding Enterprise Software Failures. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Tips-for-Avoiding-Enterprise-Software-Failures&id=6238662 Krigsman, M. (2008, December 11). Study: 68 percent of IT projects fail | ZDNet. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/study-68-percent-of-it-projects-fail/1175 Krigsman, M. (2010, August 20). Twelve early warning signs of IT project failure | ZDNet. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/twelve-early-warning-signs-of-it-project-failure/10561 Mun, Y. K. (2011, February 11). Software Development Project Management: Introduction | Suite101.com. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from http://yuen-kit-mun.suite101.com/software-development-project-management-introduction-a346155/print
how applying six sigma methodology can do to address these problems. According to the author the two most common causes of software project failures are customer requirement problems and estimating problems. He offers two case studies as examples of how six sigma can address these aspects of software implementation. The first case study discusses some of the ways six sigma can help with customer requirements, and the second case discusses the role of six sigma in schedule estimating.
2. Do not let any one individual in your IT group become the sole point of failure. Correct assessment; ironically it was a knowledge management system that led to the crash of the network. Succession planning is key ingredient to success for businesses. 3.
In this assignment, a practicing engineer that has experience in working in project management was interviewed. The purpose of the interview is to increase my understanding of what engineers do at the workplace and to educate future engineers on how to become successful in their fields.
Projects are widely used by many organizations and government institutions in the course of conducting their business. One of the reasons for this is because they have been proven to be effective in initiating change and translating strategic programs into daily activities. However, it has been established that most projects fail to deliver on time, budget, and customer specifications. In most cases, this failure is caused by over-optimism by the project management team. This over-optimism commonly referred to as optimism bias can simply be defined as overestimating the projects benefits and conversely underestimating its cost and duration time. Research have portrayed that this is often caused by failure to properly identify, understand, and manage effectively the risk associated with the project therefore putting its success at jeopardy(Mott McDonald, 2002). Fortunately, this biasness can be detected and minimized during the project gateway process.
Furthermore, in the analysis part, we will look into the technical reason and management reason which lead to the failure. Then we will describe some of the import lessons that we learned from this project which can help us to avoid such a big failure in an information system. COMPANY PROFILE
Sharma, D., Stone, M., & Ekinci, Y. (2009). IT governance and project management: A qualitative study. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 16(1), 29-50.
Jugdev, K. (2012). Learning from Lessons Learned: Project Management Research Program. American Journal of Economics and Business Administration , 4(1), 13-22.
The adage of the adage of the ad Juran Institute’s Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies. Gray, C., Larson, E. (2008). Project Management: The managerial process. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
1.0 IntroductionIn this report I will be concentrating on the failure of software systems. To understand why software systems fail we need to understand what are software systems. Software systems are a type of information system. This is because a software system is basically a means for hardware to process information. Flynn’s definition of an information system is:"An information system provides procedures to record and make available information, concerning part of an organization, to assist organization-related activities."Humans have been processing information manually for thousands of years, but with the vast increase of demand for knowledge this century has meant that a new method of information processing has been needed. Software systems have provided a new means that is much faster and efficient.
While developing a software many complex activities are required which in turn have dependencies along them. Large software projects require the involvement of programmers, documentation specialists, program managers, architects, database analysts, system analysts, , and trainers and last but not the least testers. Along with their independent responsibilities these persons are also responsible to maintain and keep a check on the software system quality as well.
Project Management Institute (PMI) (2013). Project Management Professional (PMP) Handbook. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pmi.org/certification/~/media/pdf/certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx. [Last Accessed 20 April 2014].
However, project management failures are very common. It can be caused by one factor or even a cumulative set of factors.
Moreover, it is one of the facilitators of the most widespread process of change. It is often the main catalyst, which allows the company to achieve its goals (Chan and Earth, 1999). It is considered to "enable" a fundamental restructuring. At the same time, all companies that adopt the restructuring is not successful in achieving its objectives. According to some estimates, 70 percent of the re-engineering projects fail for one reason or another (hammer and Ciampi, 1993). In some companies, and failure is often attributed to the problems of internal organization. In other companies, it projects to organize information technology fails and is often seen as a barrier to innovation (Chan and Earth, 1999).
Over the course of my professional life, I have become increasingly involved in project management roles. Doing so has made me aware of the many varied challenges that can face projects and the project managers who are charged with bringing them through to completion. The success or failure of projects, in whatever economic, political or social field, rests not just on the quality of the project’s goals, but also on the abilities of those involved in the project – and above all those who are managing it – to bring it to successful completion. To do this, project managers need to be equipped with a very wide range of skills, many of which are unrelated to the type of project itself. So, for example, a project manager of an engineering project must not only have engineering
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.