THE UNIVERSITY OF DODOMA
College Of Informatics and Virtual Education
NAME: Makame, Makame H REGISTRATION No: T/UDOM/2010/00410 PROGRAM: B Sc. Computer and Information Security
ASSIGNMENT NO.1
COURSE NAME: Software Development 1
COURSE CODE: CS 202 COUSE INSTRUCTOR: Florence Rashidi
Question: Analyze and research on why some projects fail and others succeed.
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Reasons for project success User involvement User involvement is essential for the success of the project, users should be involved in different stages of the development life cycle such as gathering requirements, planning implementation and testing. This will lead to satisfaction of users needs. Executive support With priorities actively set by top management, having executive support is very important factor in project success. The executives are the one who authorize recruitment of new team members, finance the projects, and create friendly environment for the development of the project. Clear business objectives The business objectives should be clearly stated and verified. The objectives must go side by side with the organization policy and goals. The objectives should be advantageous to the organization’s wellbeing and commencement. Experienced project manager Team performance is practically enhanced by the experience of the project manager, as he /she possess some particular characteristics as;
Do not panic while conveying a sense of urgency Positivity and ability to listen yet lead Dynamism Strong leadership Team work
Reliable estimation Perfect project estimations will result to a successful project, estimation involves time estimation, human resource estimation, cost estimation, benefit estimation and risk estimation. Minimized scope Projects with small milestones have higher success possibility; this is due that small projects can properly be implemented. For large projects layering is advisable. Formal methodology The use of well established and acceptable methodologies helps the organization to go along the safe zone. Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Reasons for project failure Lake of top management commitment Management failure may result into a catastrophic result to the organization goal. Management failure in time, scope, cost, quality, human resource, risk, and procurement is a major factor is project failure. Poor planning and estimation Project planning is the most crucial task in project development, improper planning and estimation results into project failure as the required resources such as time, members, equipments will not be satisfactory. Failure to manage end-user expectations A project is all about fulfilling end-user expectations; most projects fails because they fail to meet user needs. Conflicts among stakeholders Unity is the most important feature in the organization, group of people working together to achieve a common goal. Conflicts among the members result to project failure. Employment of new technology Changes in technology hinders much the performance of the organization, new technology requires new skills and training. Implementation of new technology challenges the performance of the project. Artificial deadlines Unexpected deadlines discourage the success of the organization. These may be due to sudden change of demand of the service to be provided by the project or else. Change scope objectives Every project has its scope, its range of activities it aimed to cover. If the aim of the project changes in the middle of development stages, the whole project loose the purpose for existence. Lack of required resources Among most important components in a project are the resources, a project that lakes required resources cannot be fully implemented. Lake of technical support A successful project need to go with current technology, which leads to the need of technical support to implement, lake of technical support leads to project failure
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References ACS Professional Development Project Management, Report on Project Failure and Success Factors Awatif Amin Qassim, Why information system projects fail: Guidelines for successful projects.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012