Failed or abandoned software development projects cost the U.S. economy alone billions of dollars a year. In Software Development Failures, Kweku Ewusi-Mensah offers an empirically grounded study that suggests why these failures happen and how they can be avoided. Case studies analyzed include the well-known Confirm travel industry reservation program, FoxMeyer's Delta, the IRS's Tax System Modernization, the Denver International Airport's Baggage Handling System, and CODIS.It has been estimated that one-third of software development projects fail or are abandoned outright because of cost overruns, delays, and reduced functionality. Some consider this an acceptable risk -- that it is simply the cost of doing business. Ewusi-Mensah argues that understanding the factors involved in development failures will help developers and businesses bring down the rate of software failure and abandoned projects.Ewusi-Mensah explores the reasons software development projects are vulnerable to failure and why issues of management and organization are at the core of any failed project. He examines these projects not from a deterministically technical perspective but as part of a complex technical and social process; he proposes a framework of factors that contribute to the decision to abandon a project and enumerates the risks and uncertainties inherent in each phase of a project's life cycle. Exploring the multiplicity of factors that make software development risky, he presents empirical data that is reinforced by analyses of the reported cases. He emphasizes the role of the user in the development process and considers the effect of organizational politics on a project. Finally, he considers what lessons can be learned from past failures and how software development practices can be improved.

Average Customer Review: ( 5 customer reviews )
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

A topic so important deserves a more stirring author than Ewusi-Mensah. I found this book dry, repetitive, and poorly organized. The book centers on a handful of case studies. Those case studies are barely mentioned until chapter four, though. Even then, I found it hard to follow the examples. The author does not present the samples one at a time, in their entirety, though. Instead, he presents one aspect of all five examples, then another facet of all five, and so on. Only in chapter seven, when the book is winding down, do I really see any depth in any of the case studies. Even then, just one is covered in any detail.

Ewusi-Mensah rightly describes the "code of silence" surrounding software project failure. His description the phenomenom seems shallow, though. Bruised egos and painful memories may well be part of the reason that failures get so little mention. Software training and practice may have more to do with the tendency to ignore failure, though. In every other field of engineering, practioners rely on knowing yield strengths and "absolute maximum" ratings of their parts and materials. The idea of failure is central to the practice, even to the legalities and forensics, of those fields. Programmers, though, are barely ever shown good examples of their craft, let alone bad examples. Management, design, and project control of software are even more ethereal - there simply is no common set of terms in which the failure can be described.

Petroski's writings show that engineering failures can be described in informative, constructive ways. Perhaps this book's target is more difficult - it discusses not the failures of the software itself, so much as failures in the process by which software is built. Perhaps, too, not every author can be a Petroski. Maybe the academic treatment really is more appropriate to this topic. If so, I would hope for an author who cites more of the field's literature and cites less of his own prior work.

finds common factors to many failuresOct 18, 2005
By W Boudville
It's an unfortunate empirical observation that many large software projects fail. Why this happens, and how it can be avoided is the subject of the text. The author looks at several abandoned projects, for which solid information has been made publicly known. These include the Denver airport's baggage handling, and the IRS Tax System Modernisation. Though surely many other failures have been quietly buried by other groups.

The author finds that often, constraints, schedules or goals were placed outside the influence of the developers. While this does not pre-ordain failure, it seems to significantly increase its possibility. Another characteristic trait seems to be a lack of executive oversight. Leading to project drift, until that becomes irreversible.

The book's best help to you might be when you are starting a project.

2 of 4 found the following review helpful:

A failure in itselfSep 30, 2003
By Gerold Keefer
unfortunately this book does not deliver what it promisses. neither i find any theoretical in-depth analysis of specific software project failures nor reasonable checklists to guide practioners. instead, many common places that do not add value compared to the publications on the topic so far (Boehm, Jones, etc.).
it does not help that the book fails to describe the problems that make specifically software projects so hard to manage. see the freely available NATO software engineering conference papers from 1968 for more helpful information on software project failures.

0 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Insightful!Apr 23, 2004
By Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract"
Here's a two-ingredient recipe for disaster: take a big organization and mix in ambitious plans for a state-of-the-art software system. The disaster already happened at the IRS and Denver International Airport, both victims of software development missteps. Such failures are common, costly and all-too-avoidable, writes academic Kweku Ewusi-Mensah. While his prose can be dry, the examples he uses prove quite juicy. A little common sense could have saved the IRS billions and the Denver airport millions. Both fell victim to surprisingly basic pitfalls, such as unclear or unrealistic goals and over optimistic expectations that inexperienced people could get the job done. Ewusi-Mensah convincingly argues that organizations need to share such learning experiences, although he acknowledges that would mark a reversal from common practice. We recommend this book to managers and engineers involved in developing software. This cautionary tale could save your neck.

0 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Insightful!Mar 08, 2004
By Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract"
Here's a two-ingredient recipe for disaster: take a big organization and mix in ambitious plans for a state-of-the-art software system. The disaster already happened at the IRS and Denver International Airport, both victims of software development missteps. Such failures are common, costly and all-too-avoidable, writes academic Kweku Ewusi-Mensah. While his prose can be dry, the examples he uses prove quite juicy. A little common sense could have saved the IRS billions and the Denver airport millions. Both fell victim to surprisingly basic pitfalls, such as unclear or unrealistic goals and over optimistic expectations that inexperienced people could get the job done. Ewusi-Mensah convincingly argues that organizations need to share such learning experiences, although he acknowledges that would mark a reversal from common practice. We recommend this book to managers and engineers involved in developing software. This cautionary tale could save your neck.