If only software quality assurance analysts get a penny every time they hear that question, they would be rich by now. Most information technology (IT) projects fail due to a myriad of reasons. The more common ones are the limited budget and the very tight timeline.
The 2015 Chaos Report released by Standish Group revealed a disturbing trend in software rollout. The company tracked the success rate of software development projects from 2011 to 2015 and found that only an average of 28% came out unscathed.
The common thread that unites all successful projects is the adoption of qa services to track and oversee the project cycles until the time of delivery.
Reasons Why Some IT Projects Fail to Get Off the Ground
- The trust is gone — Communication bogs down among IT developers, project managers, users, and project owners. They have different expectations for the project, and they think their method is the best.
- Unreasonable expectations — While you should always expect superior quality going in, setting the bar too high can quickly backfire. If your expectations are too high, the teams would not likely meet them. As a result, they end up frustrated and disappointed. On your end, you will be disappointed with them, as well. Now you are faced with a dilemma–will you replace them and set back the project or continue to trust that somehow, they will surprise you. Of course, that does not dismiss the possibility of the IT team pulling out of the job.
- Unreasonable time frame — When you plan the software development, the IT team should have input on setting timelines. The project manager should not decide based on market demand. When you rush a project, you can expect to find plenty of bugs that will only delay the whole build anyway. However, integrating testing through QA services at the start should minimize the mistakes and allow you to meet the scheduled delivery date.
- Too many bugs — If you chose the wrong IT team to develop the product, you end up with very buggy software. Hiring quality assurance engineers would be useless because the foundation is weak. The third-party quality assurance services may be excellent, but they cannot perform miracles.
- Lack of support — The support of the top management is crucial for the success of each software build. The project owner must always strike a balance between overseeing the project and giving the IT team free rein to do their magic. It all boils down to trust and, often, that requires you to close your eyes and open your wallet. There are so many horror stories about software development projects shutting down due to budget cuts.
The CIO survey by Harvey Nash/KPMG showed that weak leadership is the reason for a third of the project failures.
The efficient use of technology gives any company an edge in a very competitive industry.
According to the 2020 State of IT report, 44% of businesses plan on increasing their budgets for IT in the next year. The needle moved up a bit from the 38% of companies that increased their IT budget in 2019.
