(Last modified Thu Apr 24 11:20 2008)
Data on actual development projects is hard to come by. Some relatively recent publicly-available data is available in the 1994 Standish Group "CHAOS Report", summarized here. The data originated in a survey of 385 companies, and covered 8,380 projects. Note that several researchers have argued that this data gives too pessimistic a view overall (for example, the survey asked for data on project failures, not on project results) but nevertheless the results give an interesting insight into the relationships among the factors involved (for example, company size, project size, and project success rate).
Notably, the most commonly cited reasons that projects faced challenges in producing an acceptable system on time were related to software requirements:
and the most commonly cited reasons that projects failed to reach completion were also related to software requirements:
| Average project cost | Completed on time, on budget | Late, over budget, or incomplete | Cancelled before completion | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | — | 16.2% | 52.7% | 31.1% |
| Large companies (over $500M annual revenue) | $2.322M | 9.0% | 61.5% | 29.5% |
| Medium companies ($200M-$500M annual revenue) | $1.331M | 16.2% | 46.7% | 37.1% |
| Small companies (under $200M annual revenue) | $0.434M | 28.0% | 50.4% | 21.6% |
StandishGroup1994-cr
The Standish Group. The CHAOS Report. 1994.
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