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Question
Asked 24 September 2014
  • Semiott Society

Do you have any data points on the success rate of agile software development and lean IT projects?

There has been an earlier observation that the success rate of agile software development and lean IT projects are > 50% of the total projects executed. I would like to validate this observation with the statistics about world wide market of software development projects. Attached a link that says the world wide cost of software failure is beyond 2 trillion USD as reported in 2012. Even in conservative matrix, they say 20% of the money spend on IT is going waste. Can you please share your inputs.
Brian Prasad
California Institute of Technology
The success rates of agile software development and lean IT projects, I believe is poor (as you said around 50%) because of poor planning and poor management supports.
I have seen sucess rates for Lean projects are much higher if attentions are paid -- apriori (well-in-advance) -- on getting the key management supports/buy-in from everyone including higher managements and planning those key projects from grounds-up including definition, design, prototyping, implemention, and customer supports aspects.
I was involved on many such lean projects. Looking back, I had better sucesses since we (our lean team) paid greater attentions on detailed planning and seeking key management supports from get-go.
Take a look at some of those listed herein:
Knowledge-based Enterprising (KBE) Strategy for Lean Product Development (LPD)
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