3 - Project Delivery Pain Areas and the Way Forward

Summary

This chapter provides the context of the book and summarises how a new methodology of IT project delivery has evolved. It lists out some major failures of IT projects in the past, mentions the challenges in project delivery and identifies the root causes. It explains the reduced usage of the Waterfall project delivery methodology, having failed to keep project documents updated in real-time. It also explains the downgrading of the importance of project documentation in the Agile methodology. It introduces an alternate way of creating and maintaining project knowledge which is currently present in documents.

Context

Maturity in software project delivery is still low despite having numerous methodologies available to drive it. Methodologies generally fall under two families: Waterfall and Agile. The latest global data from the Standish Group [2], tracking over 50,000 projects during 2011–2015, shows that the success rate of Waterfall is 11% and Agile is 39%.

The book has taken the scientific structure of Waterfall and the dynamic approach of Agile, combined it with PKM and evolved a new IT project delivery methodology, which I refer to as Knowledge Driven Development (KDD).

An important reason for project failure is lack of availability of ‘fit-for-purpose’ information and timely communication across project stakeholders. In Waterfall methodology, the information and its communication are accomplished by project documents stored in a commonly accessible location. Documents change under version control with a sign-off mechanism, making it difficult to keep the document up-to-date in a continuously evolving project delivery environment. If a defect in the document is detected, say, today. It might take a month before the new version of the document is released addressing the defect (due to the sign-off mechanism). The other limiting factor is the document itself as it is written in free-form text and keeping it consistently updated involves significant effort. In Agile methodology, the situation is not better as the documents are not meant to be exhaustive enough to be considered as containing ‘fit-for-purpose’ information. The information is primarily communicated through face-to-face discussions, making it person dependent. Agile assumes fully skilled team members, and any attrition or absence might be a challenge. The only reliable source of information is code, which is written in technical language that only the technologists in the project can understand.