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5 Easy Ways to Fail in IT Projects

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I was reading this article by Joel Spolsky called “How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail” and found it very true. Because I had worked in IT companies and have seen numerous times projects being failed, either not meeting deliverables, or not meeting the deadline, or being a total mess somewhere in the middle.

When reading this article, I also couldn’t stop but relate it to Agloco’s case. I think Agloco made lots of mistakes that are mentioned in this article.

If you ever going to make your own software then you should read this article, these 5 main mistakes could save you from making lots more mistakes. And if you are a big company then you could save huge amounts of money.

Here is the excerpts from the article:

Mistake No. 1: Start with a mediocre team of developers.

Designing software is hard, and unfortunately, a lot of the people who call themselves programmers can’t really do it. You’ll never hear anyone say “the team was just not smart enough or talented enough to pull this off.” Why hurt their feelings? …

Mistake No. 2: Set weekly milestones.

Say you’re remodeling your kitchen. That guy you hired to do the work has done a lot of kitchens before, and can estimate the cost of the job without having detailed blueprints. But software developers are building things that they’ve never built before. If they had, they’d just sell you another copy of the CD-ROM. So rough estimates are impossible…

Mistake No. 3: Negotiate the deadline.

…Think of it in these terms: Mama walruses deliver their calves at the end of a 15- to 16-month pregnancy. You might ask the mother to commit to 15 months and she might say, “No problem!” Or you might say, “Fifteen months? Are you crazy? We need this in eight months!” Of course, haggling like this can’t possibly make things happen any faster…

Mistake No. 4: Divide tasks equitably.

If Mary has too much work, give some of her tasks to John. This sounds completely sensible, so you won’t be challenged. But I promise you, in the long run it’s sure to cause problems. That’s because when one developer steps in to replace another, it’s reasonable to assume that the new one will work at about one-tenth the speed. John’s going to have to spend untold hours figuring out all the things that Mary already knows about her area of code…

Mistake No. 5: Work till midnight.

…Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them…

You can read the full article at www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/…

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