The high failure rate of systems development projects has been chronicled for years and is certainly no surprise to anyone who has been involved in more than a handful.

In a recent edition of its bi-annual Chaos Report, the Standish Group International, Inc. reported the IT project success rate to be just over a third or 34 percent based on a study of 13,522 IT projects. In other words, 66 percent of IT projects were defined as outright failures or challenged. Projects cancelled or abandoned prior to completion were classified as failures (15 percent) while those classified as challenged (51 percent), ran over budget, over schedule, and/or delivered less functionality than originally planned. The Standish Group estimates there was $55 billion in project waste against $255 billion in project spending in the U.S. alone.

The Systems Alliance approach to systems development and the skills of our technical staff address and overcome issues common to failed and challenged projects:

• Lack of Planning: the development of comprehensive project plans are critical to success, even on projects employing agile development methods. Our rigorous project planning discipline assures all stages of the development lifecycle are addressed. It also helps our teams anticipate risks and develop mitigation strategies.
• Lack of User Involvement: client staff involvement throughout the development lifecycle helps keep expectations aligned. Systems Alliance team members actively listen for project requirements and implications and involve client stakeholders and team members in design and development decisions.
• Changing Requirements and Specifications: while change is inevitable, managing the change process is critical to project success. Systems Alliance team members ask the questions that help client stakeholders and team members identify evaluate the implications of change requests.
• Unfamiliar Technologies: projects involving technologies unfamiliar to the project team can result in significant risk to project success. Systems Alliance team members bring expertise, not only in development disciplines but also in core technologies. Experience on a wide variety of technically complex development initiatives, a commitment to continuing education and partnerships with major hardware and software vendors enables Systems Alliance teams to bring critical technical skills to bear on client projects.

Systems Alliance teams have an impressive track record of success on client projects.
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