Then, you probably already know what you want. Maybe you already have a launch date in mind.
You can easily communicate your vision, tell why it is the right thing to build, and why now. 1
There are some facts you should know, though.
🥱 I'm busy, show me the short version.
What am I talking about?
Despite more than 50 years of history and countless methodologies, advice and books, IT projects keep failing.
Yes, IT projects often fail:
68% of companies are unlikely to have successful projects.
🤔 It sounds pessimistic. Tell me more...
70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives, often with profound consequences.
Failure happens a lot, with heavy consequences:
The average overrun was 27%. Fully one in six of the projects we studied was a black swan, with a cost overrun of 200%, on average, and a schedule overrun of almost 70%.
Sometimes, consequences are worse than just a project overrun:
17% of IT projects go so bad that they can threaten the very existence of the company.
It's not IT projects only:
- 81% of organizations fail to regularly deliver successful projects.
- 70% are unlikely to deliver projects on time.
- 64% are unlikely to deliver projects on budget.
- 56% are unlikely to deliver projects that meet original goal and intent.
In 2009, a IDC report 2 already noticed an interesting fact about failed IT projects:
Surprisingly to some, technical challenges are the least-cited factor at 3%.
One might think technical projects fail because of technical challenges, or because of a lack of technical skills. But it's wrong, most of the time.
According to the PMI Pulse of the Profession 2021 report, primary causes of project failures are:
Q: What are the primary causes of project failures? (% selected)
🧐 Show full list
To achieve success, there's definitely many strategies to explore before adding more technical skills to a team.
Most software development teams could tell you that:
Especially if main causes of failure are not technical challenges.
For the past 13 years, I've been working with frontend, backend, mobile and cloud technologies on a wide variety of projects, with budgets ranging from thousands to millions of $.
To set up conditions of success at the early stage of your project, I can help you:
Direct a business analysis process and a comprehensive requirements gathering process.
Companies that succeed at delivering projects are the ones that use requirements gathering as a discovery process to define and understand the project scope from the beginning.
If your people and processes in business requirements are only AVERAGE, rather than excellent, this lack of excellence will consume approximately 41.5% of the IT development budget for people (internal and external) and software on strategic projects.
The image below is an example of a specification document produced during a requirements gathering phase:
Modelling of user interactions through mobile application interfaces
Estimate features complexity, design a technical solution according to the project budget and schedule, and according to the development team capacity.
Once the project functional scope has been defined with high-level functional specifications, the project schedule and technological scope can be drafted with rough estimates.
How to estimate with "t-shirt sizing"
Once functional requirements and rough estimates are known, you'll have a better idea of how much resources you need to execute your project. During this planning phase, I can help you:
Build the project roadmap and the production planning according to the available resources and technical dependencies.
This step will establish the development team needs and the delivery milestones.
Identify risk, uncertainty, and define strategies to adapt the project roadmap.
If targeted milestones cannot be reached, because of a lack of resources or a technical challenge, consequences have to be anticipated.
Two things will inevitably happen in the course of your project:
To execute your plan and manage change, I can help you:
Set up an iterative software development life cycle that integrates requirements gathering and planning steps.
This allows postponing critical decisions until the project scope is better understood. It also allows to continuously refine the project functional scope and planning, with the lessons learned from previous iterations.
Software development life cycle simplified
Define, document, and teach such software development life cycle to other team members.
This will help to align practices and processes of the whole team, and quickly onboard new members.
If you want to know more about how I can help, reach me on LinkedIn or by email at
Montreal, Canada · GMT -4
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1 If you need help to refine what you want or to shape your vision, I have friends who can help you. ↑
2 I couldn't find a public link to this often cited 2009 IDC report "Improving IT Project Outcomes by Systematically Managing and Hedging Risk" by Dana Wiklund and Joseph C. Pucciarelli. ↑
