Information Ethics

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Project Success

Software projects are risky.  There are hundreds of things that can go wrong.  Ethical approaches combined with good management reduces risk and improves outcomes.

How to Succeed:

  • Define system requirements with great care.
  • Make sure that projects are feasible given budget, time, personnel and technical constraints.
  • Ensure that projects include all the factors critical for success: the right goals, the right staff, the right vendors, the right work breakdown, the right budget and the right schedule.
  • Focus on the project stakeholders

The unfortunate odds:

According to Wyatt Gibbs:

  • One quarter of software projects are cancelled before they are completed.
  • The average software development project overshoots its schedule by half.
  • Some three quarters of all large systems are ‘operating failures’ that either do not function as intended or are not used at all.
    ("Software’s Chronic Crisis," Scientific American, September 1994.)

Others suggest that the statistics are even worse. Chris Carroll, writing for Fast Company Magazine, says, "Only 16% of [IT] projects get completed on-time and on-budget, and nearly a third get cancelled outright." ("Speed Kills," August:September, 1996.)

These disappointing results, are in most cases the result of poor planning. Mitch Kapor says, "One of the main reasons that computer software is so abysmal is that it’s not designed at all, but merely engineered." (Winograd, Bringing Design to Software, Addison Wesley 1996, 5.)

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Copyright © David H. Gleason, 1998-2007.  02.17.07