IT project success is not a coincidence

When you think about IT projects the first thing you think about is the benefits. Automating your work processes or creating a new solution can be lucrative and rewarding beyond measure. People have become millionaires or even billionaires based on a single project's performance. So it's easy to see why companies love IT projects.

However, it's not all sunshine and roses, especially if you consider current project failure rates, which can go as high as 70% by some estimates. While some businesses have a grand old time with their IT projects, a lot fail.

With that in mind, we thought it’d be worth looking into why projects fail and how you can make sure your next project isn’t just another failed statistic.

First, let’s take a look at the risks that cause projects to fail.

Risks

Scope creep

Scope creep occurs when the initial project objectives aren’t well-defined. In cases where objectives are not well-defined stakeholders may try to change the requirements mid-project which leads to ever-growing lists of features. This leads to going over time and budget and can also lead to a loss of focus which would spell disaster for the project.

Cost

IT projects can be expensive, ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. With that much money at stake, a failure can be catastrophic for the client and indeed may even be an existential risk.

Inability to scale

Sometimes projects underperform, this occurs when the expected outcome doesn't happen at all or in the way that project managers had planned. For example, the app is not built for your future needs, it works wonderfully for tens of users but suddenly gets thousands or hundreds of thousands of users per day and becomes unusable, essentially the victim of success.

Communication

Communication risk in a project refers to the potential for communication failures, errors, or misunderstandings that could lead to delays, reworks, or even project cancellation. Poor communication is a grave danger and can lead to complete project failure.

Time

Here we are talking about the risk that tasks in your project will take longer than expected. This is a common risk that you will run into because you will not do all the work yourself so it’s easy to underestimate the time it’ll take to complete a project during the initial planning phase. If a project takes longer than expected it affects the budget, delivery date, or performance.

What do you do?

It’s not all doom and gloom though, there are ways to mitigate and reduce the likelihood of project failure, let’s talk about those.

Pick the right partner

When shopping for your development agency try to find one that understands the risks involved. Ideally, you want them around for the entire process from start to finish, and not bail halfway through.

Your development partner has to have the required experience for the project. If you are making a web application then backend and frontend experience are a must, other skills that are needed include project management, databases, and UX design.

Your Partner needs to be honest with you. Be careful of promises that seem too good to be true. If you can get away with a simple solution you don’t need an over-engineered solution because that would be an extra expense for no visible benefit.

We like to use the term tech stack creep about this, where the number of tools slowly keeps increasing. In short, your partner needs to KISS, i.e. Keep It Simple and Straightforward.

But how can you know? Not everyone knows all the technology. The biggest sign to watch out for is too much technobabble, if people are talking more about the wonders of some technology rather than how they will use said technology to solve your problem then that might be a bad sign.

Pick a partner that sees things from your perspective, because they are more likely to understand your problem and suggest solutions that better fit.

Have a project Roadmap

A project roadmap tracks and communicates a project’s development milestones. A good road map is not static and reflects the state the project is in so using a Word document is probably not the best idea, a dedicated project planning tool goes a long way.

Having a roadmap focuses your priorities and gives you room to add previously overlooked features because it allows for trade-offs.

The easiest way to build your project roadmap is to start with your goals. Clear goals are essential for any project.

Once those are set, you identify the stakeholders, gather any information required, and break down the work into targets.

You estimate the time each target should take to complete and then the work begins. After each target is met you evaluate and adjust plans and priorities accordingly.

Communicate early and often

Communication is key, you have to communicate with your development partner. Everyone has to be on the same page from the get-go and any changes to scope, priorities, and progress, must be communicated early.

If possible have regular progress meetings, because that way you’ll have a good idea of the work done and how far along you are in the project. If all you have is a kick-off meeting and then no communication until the delivery date odds are you will not get what you are paying for and the project will fail.

Another aspect of communication is whether you and your development partner speak each other's languages. Ask questions and be clear when something doesn’t make sense. If a new tool or technology is to be introduced into the stack then there should be clear justification other than, it’s hot right now.

Pivot early

Even if you communicate a lot sometimes miscommunications happen. It’s important to have hands-on time with the application as it’s being developed so that you can see if it is really what you want. Accessing development versions of the application is important because it allows you to pivot early.

Pivoting is the act of making a significant change in the project's direction when faced with obstacles or changing market conditions. Sometimes it’s necessary, but it’s hard to do if you don’t have a good view of the progress

Pick the right workflow

There are several ways to build a software solution so picking one can be a daunting task. To minimize the chance of a project failure you have to pick one that facilitates communication between you and your development partner and allows you to pivot if necessary.

We recommend using the Agile methodology. The Agile methodology is a project management approach that involves breaking the project into phases and emphasizes continuous collaboration and improvement. Teams follow a cycle of planning, executing, and reviewing.

Using Agile allows constant communication and gives you the ability to quickly adapt to changing circumstances.

Conclusion

Project failures happen, but they don’t have to. If you are aware of some of the risks, hopefully, you’ll mitigate them. Our goal with this post was to show that development doesn’t have to be stressful and can be a rewarding experience.

If you want stress-free development with a partner you can trust to do everything they can to ensure your project’s success then why not call us?