Our last blog post mentioned how according to an IAG Consulting Report, 68% of software projects fail.  We wanted to further dive into the question of why in order to save you from falling into this huge percentage of failures.  But before you fall down on your knees and resort to praying to make it into the 32% of successes, read this helpful blog to ensure you give your software the best chances from the beginning!

Building Custom Software Is Similar To Building A Custom Home

The report mentions that an overwhelming majority of companies are “more likely to have a marginal project or outright failure than a success due to the way they approach business analysis.”

It comes down to the requirements. Take the analogy of building a house. When you speak with a custom home builder and tell them all about your dream home with 4 bedrooms and 3 baths, tall ceilings, and a white picket fence, do you really think they should be able to construct exactly what you are envisioning? Not a chance! That is because they need more specifications. They need to know the layout, square footage, master bedroom with walk in closet or not, shelves in the closet, how many shelves, how deep are the shelves, what material are the shelves, what color are the shelves.  You see how many questions can arise in one simple part of entire building process?  The same applies to custom software development.

Software Development Scenario. How to prevent Software Projects Fail

As the owner you might want to build a CRM integration tool to prevent software projects fail and better track your sales and inventory, which is great!  It will ideally save a lot of time and money in the near future with more confined sales pipelines, less risk of losing inventory, and ultimately happy customers!  But, you need to know exactly how you are going to make that happen – do you want logins for the sales team, do they have access to all information, is there certain administrative controls that you may want separate from sales team access, do you want customers to be able to see the process, will customers need logins, what if customers forget their logins?

If you choose to move forward with development before answering all these questions, you risk running into huge problems that will likely cost huge sums of money because the entire project will need to be revamped.  Imagine you nearly have your house completely built and ready to be painted, but then you realize you forgot to add in the laundry room which needs to be directly under the master bedroom for the laundry chute that you always dreamed of having.  The home builder will need to reconstruct a huge portion of the house, electrical wiring, plumbing, and AC may all need to be reconfigured.  It is likely going to cost you way more that your initial budget had planned for.

The initial answers to these questions are crucial and will lead to the 32% of success.  The key to prevent software project fail is to build a blueprint for your development – whether that be for your house, software application, etc.  The more time and effort put into the beginning will likely be the reason your project is an outlier – a success that will ultimately save you and your company $10,000’s, and more time and effort than you ever want to think about.