Software Development Failures
暫譯: 軟體開發失敗案例

Description:

Failed or abandoned software development projects cost the U.S. economy alone billions of dollars a year. In Software Development Failures, Kweku Ewusi-Mensah offers an empirically grounded study that suggests why these failures happen and how they can be avoided. Case studies analyzed include the well-known Confirm travel industry reservation program, FoxMeyer's Delta, the IRS's Tax System Modernization, the Denver International Airport's Baggage Handling System, and CODIS.

It has been estimated that one-third of software development projects fail or are abandoned outright because of cost overruns, delays, and reduced functionality. Some consider this an acceptable risk -- that it is simply the cost of doing business. Ewusi-Mensah argues that understanding the factors involved in development failures will help developers and businesses bring down the rate of software failure and abandoned projects.

Ewusi-Mensah explores the reasons software development projects are vulnerable to failure and why issues of management and organization are at the core of any failed project. He examines these projects not from a deterministically technical perspective but as part of a complex technical and social process; he proposes a framework of factors that contribute to the decision to abandon a project and enumerates the risks and uncertainties inherent in each phase of a project's life cycle. Exploring the multiplicity of factors that make software development risky, he presents empirical data that is reinforced by analyses of the reported cases. He emphasizes the role of the user in the development process and considers the effect of organizational politics on a project. Finally, he considers what lessons can be learned from past failures and how software development practices can be improved.

Kweku Ewusi-Mensah is Professor of Computer Information Systems at Loyola Marymount University.

 

 

Table of Contents:

Preface	ix
I	Conceptual Issues	1
1	Software Development Project Failures	3
2	Software Project Characteristics	29
3	Factors Critical to Abandoned Software Projects	47
II	Empirical Factors	71
4	Socioorganizational Factors and Abandoned Projects	73
5	Technical Factors and Abandoned Projects	107
6	Economic Factors and Abandoned Projects	137
7	User Perspectives on Software Development Failures	153
III	Learning from Failures	187
8	Postabandonment Review: Learning from Abandoned Projects	189
9	Software Development: A Strategic Paradigm	221
10	Project Failures and Aftermath	239
	References	255
	Index	265