Shortcomings in Software Development Project Management: An Analysis of New Zealand Cases
John Paynter, M. Daud Ahmed · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2000
IT failure, project management, planning The failure of the Police Integrated National Crime Information System (INCIS) project is the most publicised one of many involving budget blowouts in the public sector (Jackson, 1999).Others include: the National Library's NDIS project and the Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) project.The private sector is not immune from similar failures, although they tend to be less well publicised.The INCIS project is reported to have cost between $100-200 million and Telecom's Customer Sales and Service project (CS&S or " ) is thought to be of a similar magnitude.The information in this paper is taken from internal and external project reports as well as interviews of some of those involved.Software projects are inherently complex, and complex projects cannot succeed without careful planning.A well-planned project can be actively controlled, to do so you must ensure that progress is visible.Software projects are also inherently risky and they cannot succeed without active risk management (McConnel, 1998).Software Project management (SPM) is the first layer of the software engineering process (Pressman, 1994).As software is intangible, it is difficult to predict with certainty when a particular software process is likely to cause development problems.Software development projects are plagued by technical and managerial problems.More than 30% of all software projects in the United States are never completed, and of those completed, only 9-16% meet their time and budget projections.Over half of software projects exceed budget by 189% (anon, 1997).Software development projects are different from other engineering projects.The success of a software project depends on how the project is managed.This paper focuses on the shortcomings in different project management activities and discusses possible corrective measures for these.Those covered are transfer of experience from previous projects, change of scope, planning (including estimation, scheduling, risk management, project control, progress monitoring and reviews) human resources management and teamwork, project managers and consultants, project visibility, work environment, user involvement and management tools.