The Standish Group concluded that there are five metrics to determine the chance of success: project size (in terms of the number or people and duration), project management methodology, skills of the team, skills of the product owner, and the organisation’s maturity. The success rates swing from 1 to 81% depending on the extremes, but a study found that exellence may bring the success rate to 95% (Gaikema et al. 2019). Also, an investigation on IT project failures in Malaysia found that, besides a lack of skills, problems such as scope creep, poor specifications, lack of support, and turnover are the most commonly reported issues (Sarif et al. 2018). Kasser&Williams (1998), a baseline for older studies, identifies “poor requirements” as the only frequent technical reason for failure, followed by “human” reasons such as a lack of communication or good project management practices.
In my experience, software defects and a lack of skills in the development team are common explanations for a failure, but they are very often symptoms of deeper problems such as staffing issues, a lack of knowledge caused by high turnover in combination with poor documentation, and unmanageable complexity. Single technical errors may cause temporary disruptions, but rarely they cause a complete unrecoverable failure.
The root cause of the disaster of the 737 MAX was a defect in a flight system called MCAS, however, the technical explanation hides a long chain of poor business decisions. The first error was to solve aerodynamic issue with software (the MCAS) and avoid a complex redesign. Then they chose cheaper sensors, while MCAS became a central component in the aircraft. Boeing made a warning signal for the pilots a simple optional, did not include MCAS in the documentation, and used simulators instead of actual aircraft to perform the tests. (Cusumano, 2020). In retrospect, it is hard to consider this disaster a simple technical failure.
A good example of pure technical failure is the 2018 outage of several mobile carriers where the root cause was an expired certificate in some Ericsson equipment (Ericsson, 2018). That disruption, although impactful, was temporary and fully recoverable. Different was the case of Knight Capital. In 2012, a code change accidentally resurrected a dead function unmaintained since 2003. The software created unwanted trading orders amounting to several billion in just a few hours of operativity. Although the failure was technically recoverable, the damage to the company was not (Murphy, 2013; Skyrm, 2014).
References
Cusumano, M. A. (2020) Boeing’s 737 MAX: A failure of management, not just technology. Communications of the ACM, 64(1), 22-25.
Ericsson (2018) Update on software issue impacting certain customers. Available from https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2018/12/update-on-software-issue-impacting-certain-customers
Gaikema, M., Donkersloot, M., Johnson, J., & Mulder, H. (2019) Increase the success of Governmental IT projects. Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 17(1), 97-105. Available from https://www.iiisci.org/Journal/pdv/sci/pdfs/JS052RM05.pdf
Kasser, J. E., & Williams, V. R. (1998) What do you mean you can’t tell me if my project is in trouble?. In First European Conference on Software Metrics (FESMA 98). Available from http://therightrequirement.com/pubs/1995-8/Fesma_7.pdf
Murphy, E. M. (2013) ‘Order instituting administrative and cease-and-desist proceedings, pursuant to sections 15(b) and 21c of the securities exchange act of 1934, making findings, and imposing remedial sanctions and a cease-and-desist order’. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Release No. 70694 / October 16, 2013. Administrative proceeding File No. 3-1557. Available from https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2013/34-70694.pdf
Sarif, S. M., Ramly, S., Yusof, R., Fadzillah, N. A. A., & Sulaiman, N. Y. B. (2018) Investigation of success and failure factors in IT project management. In International Conference on Kansei Engineering & Emotion Research(pp. 671-682). Springer, Singapore.
Skyrm S. E. D. (2014) How Power Peg brought down a Knight. Futures Magazine. Available from http://www.futuresmag.com/2014/10/31/how-power-peg-brought-down-knight