Root Causes of Project Success and Failure

Three most commonly cited factors that caused projects to be "challenged":

• Lack of user input: (13 percent of all projects)

• Incomplete requirements and specifications: (12 percent of all projects)

• Changing requirements and specifications: (12 percent of all projects)

Thereafter, the data diverges rapidly. Of course, your project could fail because of an unrealistic schedule or time frame (4 percent of the projects cited this), inadequate staffing and resources (6 percent), inadequate technology skills (7 percent), or various other reasons. Nevertheless, to the extent that the Standish figures are representative of the overall industry, it appears that at least a third of development projects run into trouble for reasons that are directly related to requirements gathering, requirements documentation, and requirements management.

Although the majority of projects do seem to experience schedule/budget overruns, if not outright cancellation, the Standish Group found that 9 percent of the projects in large companies were delivered on time and on budget; 16 percent of the projects in small companies enjoyed a similar success. That leads to an obvious question: What were the primary "success factors" for those projects? According to the Standish study, the three most important factors were

• User involvement: (16 percent of all successful projects)

• Executive management support: (14 percent of all successful projects)

• Clear statement of requirements: (12 percent of all successful projects)

The two largest problems, appearing in about half the responses, were

• Requirements specifications

• Managing customer requirements

Again, corroborating the Standish survey, coding issues were a "nonproblem," relatively speaking.