Software problems or crises still exist, and the success rate of IT projects is still questionable. The Standish Group Chaos Report found that only 29% of IT project implementations are successful, and 52% are considered challenged, which means there would be some crisis like project delivery delay, cost escalation, poor quality outcome, etc., and 19% are considered utter failures.
To understand it. We need to understand the difference between Jobs vs. Projects. In jobs or tasks, we need to repeat very well-defined and well-understood tasks with very little uncertainty. However, in the challenging projects, on one side, there are some routine works (i.e., Jobs or tasks), and on the other side, there are exploration works, in which the outcome is very uncertain.
The another difference we need to understand is software projects vs non-software projects
The software is intangible and invisible until it is ready and runs. It might be possible that lots of code have been written, but I don’t know whether it is going in the right direction or not. One of the most challenging works is to incorporate changes in the development phase. Further, a small change request can have a terrible impact and leads to project delay.
If we compare the software project with non-software (i.e., building construction), it is easy to estimate by seeing the building’s status compared to software. However, it is challenging to estimate the difficulties and how long it will take in software projects. We need to manage something invisible until the end of the until it runs. So something invisible is challenging to manage. Hence, a software crisis is a natural process, and it can’t be avoided in challenging projects, but it can be minimized by following software engineering principles.
References
- Fundamentals of Software Engineering Book by Rajib Mall and NPTEL video series.
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