Information Technology Initiatives: Getting Beyond the Chaos

• Processes have evolved and are known to the participants; but it is not documented.
• The process participants know their specific tasks and how to perform their tasks but lack understanding of the overall process.
• There are usually one or more product inspections, but typically inspection occurs at the end of the process.
• Although members may perform well and meet quotas, the quality of the product produced is unpredictable.
• There is usually strong management present.
• Some participants in the process lack an understanding of the overall process, there is a little communication among workers about possible improvements.
  * See Automating Process Reengineering by Gregory Hansen

The Standish Group’s Chaos Report

• Report is the landmark study of IT project failure. Scope of the Study
• The respondents to the Standish Group survey were IT executive managers. The sample includes large, medium, and small companies across major industry segments : banking, securities, manufacturing, retail, wholesale, heath care, insurance, services, and local, state, and federal organizations. The total sample size was 365 respondents representing 8,380 applications. In addition, The Standish Group conducted focus groups and personal interviews to provide qualitative context for the survey results.
• 31.1% of projects will be canceled before they ever get completed. Further results indicate 52.7% of projects will cost over 189% of their original estimates.
• On the success side, the average is only 16.2% for software projects that are completed on-time and on-budget. In the larger companies, the news is even worse: only 9% of their projects come in on-time and on-budget. And, even when these projects are completed, many are no more than a mere shadow of their original specification requirements. Projects completed by the largest American companies have only approximately 42% of the originally-proposed features and functions. Smaller companies do much better. A total of 78.4% of their software projects will get deployed with at least 74.2% of their original features and functions.

Application of the iCapBiz Solution to Information Technology Initiatives

The Path-lign Process™ and the Path-ligner™ software integrates the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model. The SEI Maturity Model describes "the extent to which a software organization has adopted and institutionalized a continuous improvement focus." Although created primarily to measure the effectiveness of software development processes of government contractors, the maturity model represents a general theory of process evolution that can be applied to any process under investigation. SEI analysis reveals that, of the organizations studied, 81 percent have Level 1 software development processes and 12 percent have Level 2 software development processes. In other words, a full 93 percent of the organizations studied have rudimentary software development processes. The SEI Process can be used to discuss how organizations can ascend through the maturity levels.