At some time or another, you’ve probably worked on a project that just doesn’t make it on time, on budget, or both. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. According to some industry studies, including the Chaos Report recently released by the Standish Group, as many as 65% of software projects fail. OUCH. What went wrong? You tell us… do these sound familiar?
1. An Unrealistic Development Schedule
All too often, there is not enough time to build the product’s core feature set, let alone satisfy new requirements that inevitably make their way into the design spec. When a software development project falls behind, the business starts to lose money, and the project falters.
2. Resource Scarcity
Not recognizing your company’s resource limitations can be a software development project’s undoing; re-inventing the wheel in-house puts your project behind schedule, reduces your competitive advantage, and puts a strain on the business.
3. Underestimating a Project’s Complexity
From cross-platform support to performance and scalability, each technical challenge puts stress on an over-subscribed development team that often did not anticipate the number of technical challenges they would encounter. As a development project unfolds, the technical issues amplify and become unwieldy, overwhelming, and expensive to fix.

4. Being Held Hostage by Third-Party Vendors
Using third-party software components can help reduce the complexity of your project and can even improve its quality. But proprietary third party software comes with its own set of challenges.

5. Not Budgeting for Developer Expertise
Invest in quality people—whether they’re in-house or external experts—because getting your hands on the right development expertise is your first defense against project failure.

6. Budget Restraints
This point is self-explanatory (especially in the current economic climate).
7. Dismissing Open Source
By rejecting open source you miss out on proven, stable, and scalable low-cost solutions.
Some of these probably sounded eerily familiar, didn’t they? At least now you know you don’t need to feel alone!
Title photo courtesy of Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash.