Major Software Development Project Failures?

Hey,

I have been given a project on Major Software Development Project Failures?
I have to write up a report on a Project that has failed and how it could have been prevented etc.

Does anyone know of any High Profile failures that i could research?
Any help would be apreciated. Thanks.

 

Ya that one does not seem to have much info.

Id need something where i could find out what the causes of the failure. Keep suggesting if you have any more.

 

Well a place to point your research that has been in the news recently is the British NHS IT project, and the doubt cast over whether or not it will work... although the project is still fairly premature and hasn't yet been a complete catastrophe, you could dig into it... Heres an article from The Register...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/03/bma_warns_nhs/

 

Thats interesting but im looking for something that has already failed.

 

http://www.standishgroup.com/sample_research/chaos_1994_3.php

 

Depends what you call failure. There are a number of catastrophic failures due to software bugs after project delivery and a number are listed here: http://www5.in.tum.de/~huckle/bugse.html I'm familiar with the Ariane failure having worked in that industry but not on the Ariane system.

If you after information about project that were curtailed before delivery again there are plenty of examples. However, typical project failures include but not limited to:

1) Inadequate specification.
2) Mission creep - change (usually uncontrolled) of scope during prokect.
3) Obsolescent technology - exponential rise and change in technology rendered the product out of date or superceded.
4) Untested software.
5) No project reviews.
6) Poor communicationL within team, with client, with senior management, etc.
7) New innovative technology.
8) Unrealistic timescales, poor estimation, lack of budget.
9) Inappropriate hardware, software, design.
10) Human error.

and so on - see http://www.etpint.com/whyfail.htm. Essentially you are looking at all the risks to a project and one or more of them have occurred but not planned for or the cost of mitigation is a significant proportion of the project costs. I could go on at length as I've been indoctrinated with a lot of project and business management theory...

 

http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_flshbk.htm

http://www.computerhope.com/history/windows.htm

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Gates.Mirick.html


I'm joking of course

 

Sagem.. please don't cross post.