Project Discovery vs. Product Discovery: What’s the Difference and Why It Matters In the previous installment of this article series, we introduced the concept of discovery. Discovery is the process of learning and documenting important information about a project before the “real work” starts. The goal of discovery is to provide the development team…
Avoiding Software Project Failure: Identifying Common Mistakes and Solutions In the previous two articles in this series, we discussed the dismal success rates for software development projects and the top causes for these failures. Most IT project failures (whether related to software or not) can be traced to sub-optimal project environment factors, such…
Understanding the Causes of IT Project Failure: A Deep Dive into Software Development Challenges It’s a sad fact of modern It’s a sad fact of modern life: IT projects, in general, and enterprise software projects fail alarmingly. Consider the following sobering statistics gathered from various recent IT surveys: 75% of surveyed IT and corporate…
Pros and Cons of Building Your Software Building custom software to address your unique business problems has the significant advantage of giving you, at least in theory, the exact solution you need—nothing more, nothing less. The major downside: It requires a significant investment in time, money, and resources to pull it off. And there’s a…
Build vs. Buy: 9 Questions to Ask The quest for digital solutions to modern business problems inevitably leads to a fundamental choice: Do you build a solution from the ground up or buy a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) system? The choice is rarely, if ever, straightforward. The first step is to gather some facts. To that…
The Build vs. Buy Dilemma In many aspects of life, you are given a fundamental choice: to make something or pay someone else to do it. Do you build a new coffee table for the living room, or buy one? Make a casserole for the company potluck, or buy one at the grocery store? Make…
