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Outsource 10 Reasons Why Software Projects Fail

Even after utilizing the collective software development experience of hundreds of software companies and software experts over the years, across the globe, a large chunk of "software projects still fail big time". So the big question is - why does a software project fail, if at all?

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10 Reasons that Lead to
Software Project Failure

The possibility of software projects failing can be attributed to various reasons - costs, scheduling and quality issues, and/ or achievement of objectives. This pose a serious threat to companies wishing to outsource their software development needs, as software project management failures often cause huge losses in time and money, and can prove to be detrimental to a company's growth and development.

Miscalculated Time and Budget Frames

Clients are always eager to have their projects rolled-out on time and even before the stipulated time at throw away prices. In most cases, this keenness of the client leads to developers agreeing to a rather shorter or unrealistic and non-negotiable time frame for the project delivery at meager rates. As a result, programmers are not able to deliver the project on time.

Was it Needed At All?

This is rather a surprising reason which attributes to a software project failure, primarily in low-consensus and non-evaluative organizations that lack in leadership. It is well known that some of the projects can be really resource intensive and can defeat the whole purpose of investing time and money in developing the software.

Lack of Communication

Another key aspect is the failure to set up effective communication channels and participative environment. Due to this, ideas or process flows get adrift and leads to lack of previews and interactions between the active project promoters and developers. At times standardized assumptions may lead to misunderstanding as standards may vary leading to business software failure.

No End-user Involvement

If the user's point of view is not taken into consideration while developing the IT project you are definitely calling in for trouble. So failure to find and engage the right users to participate in the software development process is extremely disastrous.

Unfocused Executive Sponsors

Inactive leadership through non-effective executive sponsors is why IT projects fail. They are the people who keep the process ignited and are primarily responsible for the success or failure of the project. So in most cases lack of time spent by these executive sponsors or the complete lack of it, leads to project failures.

Failing to See the Bigger Picture

This can be one of the major reasons for the failure of a software project. The lack of foresight or stakeholders' confidence can be a huge reason for the failure in seeing the bigger picture in developing the software. In hindsight this also tells us the importance of reviewing failure of a software project before starting a new project.

Chasing Technology

Some managers are lured into the benefits of the latest available technology, and try to use it for their ongoing projects. This forces them to gravitate from the planning done at the design stage. This leads to the failure of the whole system, change in objectives, or failing to complete the project on time.

Development Downtime

Development downtime is one of the primary contributors to challenged or failed projects. Major factors that lead to software project failure are - application bug or error, environmental factors, infrastructure or software failure, virus, hacker, network/hardware failure and operator error.

Lack of Periodic Assessment

Lack of client induced and developer mandated assessments, and failure in smartly establishing milestone points leads to improper assessments, which leads to irreparable or catastrophic failures.

Lack of Quality Testing

In most projects, the importance given to coding isn't given to testing. Honestly speaking testing calls for a greater integrity and role in the entire software development lifecycle. Casual testing, testing under non-real time environments contribute to testing failures. Bolder companies test their projects under live production environments.

Software Project Management Statistics to Ponder

As per the recent study, an incredible 70% of organizations have suffered at least one project failure in the prior 12 months, and 50% of the respondents indicated that their large software projects failed to consistently achieve the objectives they had set out in the beginning.

Being able to identify the causes of failure and categorizing them can lead to lower failure rates in future endeavors. Here's how we have classified Software projects based on their performance.

Successful Software
projects are on time, on budget, and have a satisfactory implementation

Challenged Software
projects are over budget, late, and/or have an unsatisfactory implementation

Failed Software
projects are the ones that were either canceled prior to completion or discarded after implementation

Outsource to India for Effective Execution of Your Software Project

At Outsource2india, we have a team of highly skilled and experienced software professionals, with expertise across multiple domains. Vast on job experience has helped our team understand and figure out the reasons that may lead to the failure of a software project. Also, they are aware of the ways in which the project failure can be avoided. Read our well researched article on 10 ways to avoid project failure to know more.

Contact our software team to know how we can help you effectively avoid software project failures and ensure successful delivery and execution of your cherished long-term software project.

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