Risk Analysis

For those of you familiar with a traditional project management process, you’re probably familiar with a typical project lifecycle- plan, budget, design, develop, test and release. You may be less familiar with the percentage of projects that utilize this management process, yet fail to stay within the project’s intended timeline, budget and scope.

According to the “Chaos Report”, a project management study on software development companies: … 35 percent of software projects started in 2006 can be categorized as successful, meaning they were completed on time, on budget and met user requirements. This is a marked improvement from the first, groundbreaking report in 1994 that labeled only 16.2 percent of projects as successful … 35 percent! Almost two out of every three software development or integration projects are failures.

If you are not planning on selling services or merchandise on your site, collecting customer data or statistics, or updating site content via a content management system, you can probably rest assured your project will not be a total failure. However, if you are planning on utilizing any or all of these features into your website, we highly recommend you read this section. At the same time, do not let this number scare you.

There are many reasons why projects fail, but by taking precautionary measures your chances of success are significantly increased. One of the most significant precautionary measures your team can take is to understand which risks are most important to your business (i.e. time to market, quality, features), and then determine which project life cycle minimizes those risks.