Projects: what causes failure
So we’ve all been there. The new project excitement, requirements, saying we learnt from the last failed project. We have agile, scrum, xp, lean etc. So why do we still get failed projects.
A google search on “why software projects fail” reveals around 20,100,000 hits. It does seem like the situation is here to stay. As an industry that works around analysing a problem and finding a solution, can we not fix this ?
What are the key factors that cause projects to fail? This is an open question, so feel free to add to it.
Seems like most lists out there favour the following as key factors…
- Poor requirements
- Poor practices
- Changing requirements
- Lack of understanding requirements
- Lack of ownership.
- Lack of communication
- Lack of knowledge
- programming
- methodologies
- domain
- Lack of planning
To me the success factors seem obvious …
- Requirements - If we understand what’s “poor requirements”, can’t we get better ones?
- Communication - developers, steakholders, project managers, development managers…
- Share knowledge -
- ensure everyone knows the what, why and how.
- Understand the techniques and methodoligies used - not just the words
- collective code ownership : everyone should share responsibility for the quality of the code
This is a recurring problem within our industry, so why can’t we fix this?
