There are lots of tips, and guidelines on project management. However, IT, and software agile projects are in the hot spot.
Failure factors are interrelated to complex and volatile IT projects are categorized as organizational, people, process, and technical and these influential factors are illustrated as follows, any negligence in following factors lead to increase rate of failure of the project itself.
Organizational:
- An apparent lack of Executive sponsorship
- An apparent lack of Management commitment
- The organizational culture is obsolete
- Organizational culture is political-oriented
- Organization size is not logical
- There is no agile logistical arrangement
People:
- There no sufficient human technical know how
- There is no competent project management strategy
- There is no sufficient and productive team work
- There is resistance (technology changes very fast, but people mindset changes very slowly)
- There is no competent CRM (customer relationship management)
- Negligent in Instructions and experiences
- Unclear Values and responsibilities
- Lack of cooperative mindset
- Company policy itself plays a man role
Process:
- The project scope is not well-defined
- The project requirements are not well-defined
- The project planning is not engineerized.
- There is no agile progress tracking mechanism
- There is no sufficient customer engagement
- There is no clear task output and task priority
Technical:
- There is no sufficient set of proper agile practices
- There is no appropriate technology and tools
Environment:
- There is no market research
- Inappropriate scheduling and resource allocation
- Tools are not matched
- There is no consideration about customers and users
IT project mangers usually seek for perfectionism in their project which is set out to do, but never achieved. Generally speaking, following success factors may paved the way and facilitate the process toward successful project.
Organizational:
- Robust executive support
- Committed managers/stockholders
- Rhizome-liked/cooperative organizational culture
- Productive communication circle
- Up-to-date agile methodology
- Collocated team orientation
- Environment
- Appropriate reward system for agile
People:
- Competence /expertise team members
- Motivation
- Managers’ know how in agile process
- Managers with versatile style
- Self-organized and coherent teamwork
- Centered customer relationship management
Process:
- Agile-centered requirement management process
- Integrated and agile-centered project management
- Agile-centered configuration management process
- Effective communication cycle
- Robust customer engagement
- Customer-centercity strategy
Technical:
- Well-defined standards
- Pursuing simplicity, when it comes to design
- Right sizing of documentation
- Regular delivery
- Fist deliverables first (most important features should be delivered first)
- Correct testing (system/software testing lifecycle)
- Providing technical training correspondingly
Project:
- IT Project scope management
- IT Project requirements management
- IT Project time management
- IT Project cost management
- IT Project quality management
- IT Project human resource management
- IT Project communication management
- IT Project risk management
- IT Project procurement management
- IT Project stakeholders’ management
For more information you may read this article.