International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 5

ISSN: 2321-8169
1143 1147

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Cataloguing Most Severe Causes that lead Software Projects to Fail

Vikas Sitaram Chomal1

Dr. Jatinderkumar R. Saini2

[email protected]
1Assistant Professor
The Mandvi Education Society
Institute of Computer Studies,
Mandvi, Surat, India

[email protected]
2Director (I/C) & Associate Professor
Narmada College of Computer Application,
Bharuch, Gujarat, India

Abstract--Nowadays software system is a vital constituent of each and every business representation, be it core product manufacturing, banking,
healthcare, insurance, aviation, hospitality, social networking, shopping, e-commerce, education or any other sphere. If any business has to be
leveraged and shorten then software has to be integrated with the main stream business of any organization. Crafty and development of any
software system entails massive capital, a lot of time, intellectual, domain expertise, tools and infrastructure. Despite the fact that the software
industry has highly developed quiet a lot in past decade, however percentage of software failure has also enlarged, which led to the loss of
capital, time, good-will, loss of information and in some cases severe failures of critical applications also lead to the loss of lives. This paper
presents a classification of the grounds that leads software to be unsuccessful. We have surveyed the allied literature and endeavour to present an
extensive and ample catalogue of the diverse causes accountable for making software out of order. The paper also presents a scrutiny as well as
categorization of the identified causes.
Keywords: Information Systems Development (ISD), Information Systems Development Projects, Information Technology, Software, Software
Engineering, Software Failure, Software Quality, Software System.

__________________________________________________*****_________________________________________________
I.

INTRODUCTION

Chomal & Saini [18] defines the primary goal of software

engineering as; one basic goal of software engineering is to
produce the best possible working software along with the
best possible supporting documentation.
Software system is any software product or application
supporting any business. A software system could be
defined as a system of intercommunicating components
based on software forming part of a computer system (a
combination of hardware and software). It "consists of a
number of separate programs, configuration files, which are
used to set up these programs, system documentation, which
describes the structure of the system, and user
documentation, which explains how to use the system". A
system failure occurs when the delivered service no longer
complies with the specifications, the latter being an agreed
description of the system's expected function and/or service.
This definition applies to both hardware and software
system failures.
According
to
Charette
[11]
SOFTWARE
IS
EVERYWHERE. It's what lets us get cash from an ATM,
make a phone call, and drive our cars. A typical cell phone
now contains 2 million lines of software code; by 2010 it
will likely have 10 times as many. General Motors Corp.
estimates that by then its cars will each have 100 million
lines of code. The average company spends about 4 to 5
percent of revenue on information technology, with those
that are highly IT dependent--such as financial and

telecommunications companies--spending more than 10

percent on it.
According to Lyytinen et al [6], the practice of Information
Systems Development (ISD) has undergone a radical
transformation during the last decade. Advancing
technologies have encouraged a migration away from the
tradition, life cycle methods to development toward more
flexible and dynamic approaches in which reusable
components are assembled into working systems in a
radically shorter time. Today, there are few technical
reasons for companies to experience the delays and backlogs
that plagued systems development 20 years ago. However
ISD remains a high proposition. Information system projects
continue to fail at an alarming rate, and the problem of run
away development projects has never been more serious.
Chomal & Saini [16] and Hilburn et al [14] defines software
quality as; software quality is one of those terms that
everyone uses; but there is probably not a universal,
consistent understanding and agreement about its meaning.
Software engineers (and academics) apply the term "quality"
to both the product being produced and to the process used
to produce it. Although these two types of "quality (product
quality and process quality) are dependent on each other,
they involve different techniques, measures, and
implications. Broadly speaking, product quality is related to
how well the product satisfies its customer/user
requirements. Related to this (but maybe not specified) are
the usability, performance, reliability, and the
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International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 5

ISSN: 2321-8169
1143 1147

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
maintainability of the software. Process quality is concerned
with how well the process used to develop the product
worked. In this ease we are concerned with elements such as
cost estimation and schedule accuracy, productivity, and the
effectiveness of various quality control techniques (e.g.,
inspection rates and yields)
Every association commences a project with intention of
deploying it productively to carry out the purpose specified
by the client or as required by the commerce, however there
are causes that this target of the association is not
accomplished due to some imperfection which later results
in failures. Software development project failures have
become routine. With approximately each day frequency
these failures are reported in newspapers, journal articles, or
popular books. These failures are defined in terms of cost
and schedule over-runs, project cancellations, and lost
opportunities for the organizations that embark on the
difficult journey of software development. Rarely do these
accounts include perspectives from the software developers
that worked on these projects.
So this is not an erroneous proclamation to articulate that
software failure could happen at any stage of software
product development. Software failure term is in general
used when the software doesnt perform its intended
function or crashes after deployment.
This paper discusses on why most projects fail and what the
top reasons for project failure are in software development
project.
II.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Dalall & Chhillar [13] states that, a recent survey of 800 IT

managers says that 62% of total software fails, which is true.
49% software suffered budget overruns, 47% had higher
than expected maintenance costs and 41% failed to deliver
the expected business value and ROI. Few software while
designing never thought of considering the requirements
which cause threats and failures later in the stage at the time
of utilizing the product for example- information security,
hacking, virus threats, scaling up to the level of usage,
maintainability and performance. Software projects fail for
various reasons from all the domains and technologies. So
this paper would consider case studies showing threats, risks
and failure of software systems supporting nation security,
banking and financial analysis application, aviation, medical
and social networking applications which are used globally.
According to Linberg [7], one recent study reported that
31.1% of all corporate software development projects are
cancelled before they get completed and 52.7% are costing
189% of their original estimates (Standish Group

International, 1994). The Standish study defined project

failure as either a project that has been cancelled or a project
that does not meet its budget, delivery, and business
objectives. Conversely, project success, is defined as a
project that meets its budget, delivery, and business
objectives. With this definition, the average software project
success rate in the Standish study was a dreadful 16.2%.
Rajkumar & Alagarsamy [4] in their research represented,
The Standish group and [13] CHAOS report is, only 9% of
projects in large companies were successful. At 16.2% and
28% respectively, medium and small companies were
somewhat more successful. A massive 61.5% of all large
company projects were challenged compared to 46.7% for
medium companies and 50.4% for small companies.
Nauman et al [1] states that, the study of the failure of
Information System projects in developed and developing
countries is one of the hot research areas and many authors
have done their work to identify the factors that can
minimize the failure rate. . The scope of project could not be
visualized by all of the stakeholders which influence the
system analysts to overlook or not fully understand the
requirements of different users. On the other hand the high
expectations by the users about the system or project can
cause a project to fail. In Information System Development
Projects that support the existing business processes, the
alignment of business and IT strategy goals is one of the
critical success factors. Leading cause of some IS projects
failure is the lack of alignment between business and IT
departments in the organization. Environmental problems
like procurement, management continuity and optimistic
estimations of benefits can also cause project failure. Other
factors like differences in age, education, system
development experience and managerial position, can also
have a profound effect on the success or failure of an
Information System Development Project. Some analysis
suggests that issues like constructivism and the sociology of
technology also affect the success of an Information System
Development Project.
Sauer [2] has attempted to classify the failure categories.
The classification is given in the following Table 1 and this
classification provides a suitable framework to help us make
initial diagnosis of the type of failure.
Table 1: Classification of Failure Categories
Type
Description
Correspondence
Failure to achieve predefined
failure
objectives
Process failure
Failure to produce a system in given
limits
Interaction failure
Level of use or user satisfaction
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International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 5

ISSN: 2321-8169
1143 1147

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Terminal failure
Expectation failure

failure
Project terminated, cant be tolerated
more
Inability to meet the expectations of
specific
stakeholder

Morisio et al [9] defines a project failure as, project failure is

a project that is one day late, or one dollar over budget, or
one requirement short an unsuccessful one.
According to Ahmad [19], failure of IT projects can be
attributed to some generic root causes, the main categories
of the project failure taxonomy. It also indicates that the
success of IT projects can be attributed to generic root
causes, the main categories of the project success taxonomy.
This study reveals that any reason for IT projects success or
failure should belong to one of the categories in the
corresponding taxonomy independent of the application
domain (banking, telecommunication, healthcare, human
resources, etc.)
According to Chomal & Saini [15] and Arlat et al [8]
System failure occurs when the delivered service no longer
complies with the specifications, the latter being an agreed
description of the system's expected function and/or service'.
This definition applies to both hardware and software
system failures. Faults or bugs in hardware or a software
component cause errors.
According to CHAOS MANIFESTO 2013 for the year 2004
- 2012, the percentage of success, failure and challenged
software are mentioned in Table 2
Table 2: Percentage details from 2004 2012
2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
Successful 29% 35% 32% 37% 39%
Failed
18% 19% 24% 21% 18%
Challenged 53% 46% 44% 42% 43%

the software does not include flaws that will prevent it from
meeting its requirements. The implication is that both
innocent and malicious introduction of flaws must be
explicitly avoided in trusted software.
Chomal & Saini [17] as well as Selby & Basili [12] in their
work define several error related concepts as: (1) Error
related effort: Error isolation effort How long it takes to
understand where the problem is and what must be changed.
Error fix effort How long it takes to implement a
correction for the error. Error correction effort How long it
takes to correct an error, which is the sum of error isolation
effort and error fix effort. (2) Error type: Wrong
Implementation require a change. The existing code or logic
needs to be revised, the functionality is present but it is not
working properly. Extra Implementation requires a
deletion. The error is caused by existing logic that should
not be present. Missing Implementation requires and
addition. The error is caused by missing logic or function.(3)
Error severity (trouble reports): Level 1 Program is
unusable, it requires immediate attention. Level 2 Program
is unusable, but functionality is severely restricted and there
is no work around. Prompt action is required. Level 3
Program is usable, but has functionality that is not critical, it
can be avoided. Level 4 Problem is minor, example
message or documentation error and is easily avoided. 4)
Error severity (inspection): Major Error could lead to a
problem reported in the field on a trouble report. Minor
Anything that is less than major severity, example,
typographical mistakes and misspelling. 5) Error reporter
type (trouble reports): User Error is reported by field user
or found by a developer while using the product. Developer
Error is discovered by a developer during field testing or
when looking at the source code or searching for error in a
released system. 6) Inspection type: Design inspection
These are inspections held during the high level and low
level design phase. Engineering inspection These are code
inspection that are held after the completion of unit testing.
III.

Nasir et al [10] states that, the term Software Crisis

emerged to describe the software industrys inability to
provide customers with high quality products within
schedule and under budget. Hardware costs were dropping
while software costs were rising rapidly. Major computer
system projects were sometimes years late, and the resulting
software was unreliable, hard to maintain and performed
poorly.
Antoroso et al [3] defines Software trust as the degree of
confidence that exists that the software will be acceptable
for ones needs. This means that software trust is
established only after one has become convinced,
presumably based on a meaningful set of information, that

FINDING AND ANALYIS

This section presents our recognition of the major concerns

found from the review of related literature. We also present
a scrutiny of the recognized points which make a software
product inoperative. We deem that these are the grounds for
gap in the life cycle of software product development which
starts from software requirement collection and tends to
complete with the final software product developed.
1)
Failure rates of larger IT projects emerge to be
higher than small IT projects. Large projects have a high
risk of failure since complication increases when the degree
of project becomes larger.
2)
When you do a project and the customer does not
contribute in it, the project is destined to be unsuccessful.
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International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 5

ISSN: 2321-8169
1143 1147

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Without user input you cannot feel dedicated to the product,
to keep away from the reason of project failure, senior
management needs to set up a working environment in
which the customer can enthusiastically participate in the
project and communicate with the team. Then, project
prospect will be clear and right priorities will be set up.
Therefore senior management need to continuously support
the project to make it clear to staff it is a priority.
3)
Time required to complete a particular task refers
to the time on a task, while duration represents the time
spent on it. Estimating schedule based on the time on task is
a common mistake in project management.
4)
Although monitoring and checking the work
improvement regularly is supposed to be a decisive element
for a project triumph, many IT project managers fall short to
meet this prerequisite. A probable collapse in
communication can consequence in poor requirements
understanding for all parties, leading to an abstract project
evaluation.
5)
Numerous projects are elaborated progressively
and in these situations project managers rely on rolling wave
planning. As a result, the goal of a project may be only
partially clear due to a poor requirement gathering in the
definition stage of the project. In such case, the scope and
schedule developed by project managers cannot possibly be
accurate because their objectives are unclear. Defining clear
requirements for a project can take time and lots of
communication. Further, changes in objective is been
regarded as a natural phenomenon in IT projects by many
managers. Without awareness of the differences between
initial objectives and new requirements, an IT project can be
led in a wrong direction.
6)
The project collapse is often caused by lack of
testing resources. While software developers focus on
generating code, they do not deal with testing. Frequently
lack of testers and their poor skills and knowledge will make
a project unacceptable because acceptance tests to see
whether the product meets the business requirements are not
run. Poor testing may be caused by poor requirements set,
lack of change control, inadequately trained staff, lack of
time for performing testing.
7)
Former to picking a software package, management
should meet with their staff i.e. end users to determine what
the software must do, and for whom. Management often fail
to evaluate actual and complete needs by interviewing the
staff to discover what is needed and what is desired.
8)
Prior to opting for a software program,
management must be familiar with the technical capabilities
of the staff that will be using and supporting the proposed
software system. How much of the configuration can be
done by staff? How much training will be necessary to
prepare staff to use a new software program? Failure to
know this in advance leads to insufficient budget and time

allotment in the project plan for implementation and for

training.
9)
Many management begin researching software
without having a clear idea of how much they can afford to
spendnot just on the project, but on the total cost of the
program, including the cost of allocating its own staff to
assist in the project. Failure to allocate funds for change
management leads unmet expectations. This may cause the
program to either be eliminated, or result in costly changes
being required late in the project.
10)
Project planning means creating work breakdown,
and then assign responsibilities to the developers over time.
Project planning consists of construction of various tasks,
timelines and essential pathways including Gantt charts and
PERT charts and different written plans for various
situations. Allocation of roles and responsibilities has to be
clearly defined, and it becomes crucial while hiring the stall
from outside. Proper scheduling is also required before the
start of the project. It includes the time scheduling, teams
scheduling. Project managers dont know what they have to
plan and schedule. They just only tell the programmer what
to do and the programmers can come up with a proper
solution. The top secret of a winning software development
project is to control the quality up and lower the risk.
11)
Risk management is a significant issue on the way
to software project failure if its not administered timely and
effectively. As nothing can be calculated that what will
ensue in future so we have to take the necessary steps in the
present to take any uncertain situation in the future. Risk
management means dealing with a concern before it
becomes a crisis.
12)
Projects with unrealistic expectations are also about
evenly likely to be poorly managed projects that fail to
validate the feasibility of satisfying user expectations.
13)
The majority of products have a number of groups
of users who might use different subset of features have
different frequencies of use, or have different knowledge
level. If software developers do not make out the main user
classes for product in premature stage then user needs would
not be met. After identifying all user classes, make user that
each has a voice.
14)
Software projects fall short because we do not
recognize that good engineering ideology should be applied
to software projects.
15)
If the organization or company is unfitted with the
necessary technology to complete the project, it will be
almost impossible to thrive. This also means having a staff
that is equipped with the skills to use that technology, which
sometimes gets overlooked if the technology is new to the
company. Projects not only fail due to outdated technology,
but also because they use new technology that not everyone
is caught up on. Technology can also affect a project if
learning to use it takes longer than planned.
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International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication

Volume: 2 Issue: 5

ISSN: 2321-8169
1143 1147

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
16)
Top management proves a smaller amount of
loyalty towards software project task.

[7]

Based on the scrutiny of above points, we now propose a

cataloguing of these acknowledged points into below stated
heads.
1)
Size
2)
User
3)
Stakeholders
4)
Goals and objectives
5)
Participation/Communication
6)
Requirements
7)
Technological factors
8)
Risk
9)
Budget
10)
Planning
11)
Development Process
12)
Management
IV.
CONCLUSION

[8]

This paper deals with basic aspects which can cause the
software development project not to succeed. All of these
factors are to be considered at the management level and
then transferred to the lower management. Projects succeed
and sometimes, projects fail. Knowing what factors can lead
to project failure is important for the project manager so
they know what to look for when managing their projects.
The processes and practices complement each other for
improvement and both require human effort from everyone
in the organization. As future effort in this course, we mean
to mechanize a methodology that will lessen, possibly
eradicate altogether, the causes of errors identified by us.
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