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First of all, we have to seek out and find the problem before we go on our journey to unravel the possible solution.
So, what is the problem? Is not everyone already delivering projects fine and dandy without the need for a Toolkit?
Well let us look. There have been a series of reports and studies into change project successes and failures.
There are many examples of this including:-
- In 1995, the OASIG Study which drew a sample from over 14,000 organisations and deduced 70% of projects fail in some respect.
- In 1997, the KPMG Canada Survey revealed that 61% of projects failed.
- In 2001, a survey of E.R.P. installations by Robbins-Gioia revealed that of the respondents, 50% said it was unsuccessful.
It looks from the survey dates and the reduced percentages of failure that we are all as an industry getting gradually more successful at
delivering projects and this is naturally lauded. Now let us look at The Chaos Report.
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The Chaos Report.
It is The Chaos Report that is probably the most in depth study of the topic, which will help to explain the continuing challenges.
The Chaos Report was produced by The Standish Group and it looks with some precision at project delivery. You may elect to favour or disfavour its
conclusions or you may wish to probe further into the approach or the statistical analysis of the report. However, without defiantly bowing to rebellious sensationalism to
support, or to oppose, its conclusions we cannot escape the fact that we all know projects, large and small, in various domains that have
failed. In some cases, these have failed really spectacularly. Furthermore, we have all worked with people we trust who have had cause to
cathartically relate to us their project torments and horror stories. So we have to concede that the ominous lure of project failure still
lurks menacingly in our midst.
So, let us look at the challenges of project delivery outlined in the report in a little more detail.
The Chaos Report details that of the sample of software projects completed :
- only 16.2% were to time and budget,
- 51% were late and/or over budget,
- 45% of functionality developed was never used,
- 19% of functionality developed was rarely used,
- 31.1% were cancelled before they completed and thankfully we come to the end of this dismal list with the final comment that,
- 52.7% were double the cost of original estimate.
This list screams to us some obvious failure examples but our projects cannot be viewed as success or failure based on the comments of respondents alone. We must examine the appropriateness of the output, the timeliness of delivery as well as the investment costs the organisations have made in the projects. Clearly, these projects produced wastage, did not deliver at all or delivered the wrong outcomes too late or too expensively. This is a poor achievement for the world of project delivery of course. However, we add further financial foreboding to this dismal dilemma in the section of the Toolkit called Agile and Evaluating Waste. Here we show how projects are wasting, and could be saving, millions!
Our challenge is to deliver projects to specific quality, time and budgetary criteria. Excellent.
We have seen the Toolkit Undertaking so let us look at how we intend to achieve this.
Our objective in presenting The Big Agile Toolkit is to make the process of agile project delivery simple but also repeatable: to get you delivering your projects to time, quality and budget now. But importantly we want to be able to do this now and forever in the future.
That, as you will see, is the easy part. But, what we really want is for you to achieve all this with a significant measure of style.
So, now that you know you are going to deliver this project to budget as well as to time and quality, your very first mission on your project is an especially important one indeed.
You will immediately book the Project delivery celebration.
Oh yes.
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 SPADE: Successful Pragmatic Agile Delivery Everytime™ |
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Agile Project Governance for Cost Conscious Companies™
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