Why Most Software Implementations Fail - Part 2
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“Software and cathedrals are much the same; first we build them, then we pray.”
- Anonymous
Introduction
In part one of our series, we discussed why a lack of planning and poor usability can throw IT projects off course. In the second part, we’ll examine other leading issues such as scope creep, poor communication and changing requirements.
Scope Creep and Changing Requirements:
Scope creep, the gradual expansion of project scope beyond its original boundaries, is a frequent contributor to software implementation failures. When properly managed, scope creep can be converted into a change order and yield better outcomes, adapt to changes in business models, and innovate simpler workflows. The key word is “properly managed”. Unfortunately, more often than not, that’s not the case.
Scope creep comes from a lack of understanding by the business owner about the level of effort and downstream impacts of changes.
A report published by ResearchGate found that scope creep was one of the major causes of failure in software projects. A survey of 60 project managers found that 92% of projects failed due to a lack of scope creep management.
In addition, the implementation team (whether contracted or internal) may not have a mature process to evaluate the changes and inaccurately estimate the additional cost and effort. New requirements, timelines and budgets can make the project unmanageable, leading to delays, budget overruns, and ultimately software failure.
Communication Breakdown
Miscommunication between project stakeholders, including vendors, internal teams, and management, is one of the most common causes of software implementation failure. The breakdown is often subtle and takes on two forms: politics and priorities.
Political communication breakdown can manifests when the receiving line of business is not happy with the system choice. As a result, the team has little to no investment in the success of the project. They may ignore the team trying to implement it or even actively work to subvert it.
Priorities communication breakdowns happen when the business stakeholder responsible for the implementation gets pulled away into other priorities and/or does not get frequent enough updates.
They stop attending project update meetings, fail to read project reports or give guidance to a team without fully understanding all the facts to make an informed decision. The implementation team may want to hide certain things going wrong because they are fearful of making mistakes or they don’t want to bother the stakeholder.
Ultimately the implementation team and end users may be left to make choices that may seem logical at the user level but may not align at the business level.
They may end up having to redo the implementation, allowing the project to run over time and budget, which puts the success of the project and potentially the business at risk.
Technological Challenges
Software implementations typically involve highly complex technical requirements that can be difficult to get right. Teams might encounter a range of challenges, but two of the most common are data migration and environment compatibility.
Moving structured data in a single table, such as contact information, is fairly straightforward. Things become much more difficult when it comes to structured relational legacy data from an RDBMS from a monolithic 20 year old software to a modern microservices enabled unstructured API-driven software architecture.
A recent study found that 95% of companies experienced negative impacts due to data quality. Issues may be subtle and frustrating. In some cases, implementations achieve 95% of the work in the first couple of weeks only to be derailed by the final stages. The issues only have to be minor. Issues such as software bugs in interpreting a field or an API integration problem may take months to resolve.
Environment compatibility occurs more with on-premises deployments than SaaS software. This can include underlying hardware, operating system (OS) versions and specific software libraries on-premises that bundle with the OS.
This problem occurs most when an IT team has a “certified architecture” that has passed security, compliance, and regulatory requirements. However, a lack of due diligence in the software selection process makes the new software incompatible. Sometimes these incompatibilities are not noticed until halfway through the implementation.
For example, if the new software requires a library version of 2.4, but the version that ships and is supported by an OS like Red Hat Linux 9.2 is 2.5, you may not catch this until user testing when a simple (but critical) feature in the software fails.
This creates quite a challenge as all the options are bad: wait until the software vendor updates their software (months), create a security exception to run a non-compliant server, or install the 2.4 version of the software library that nullifies Red Hat support.
Conclusion
Throughout these two articles, we’ve covered the key issues that can harm your chances of success. Software developments are highly complex at the best of times, but they become even harder with poor planning, communication, usability, and quality. You need to invest time and money into this development to ensure all stakeholders have been consulted and that the project does not stray from its original objective. By addressing these challenges head-on, businesses can increase their chances of achieving successful software implementations and realizing the full potential of their chosen solutions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A technologist, entrepreneur, and focused IT strategies leader, George builds scalable platforms and businesses. With expertise in network & server architecture and implementation, multiple programming languages, and product design, George’s comprehensive knowledge of web‐based technologies informs the strategic direction of funded startups to fortune 500 companies looking to change the future of business through digital technologies.
About Brian Timothy and Associates LLC
Brian Timothy and Associates, provides medium sized businesses with fractional expertise to help them grow and improve. Using our expert consultancy, we’ll bring focus, experience and proven results to help take you onto the next better. Unlike other companies we are transparent and follow through on our promises. We don’t bill endlessly. We don’t pass the baton and we won’t be opaque in our pricing. You’ll see clearly what you get and what you pay for.
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