Chapter 4. The Problem of Large Applications

Large application design projects are famously prone to failure. The paper “The Impact of Size and Volatility on IT Project Performance” [22] reports a survey of project managers, which showed that 77% of projects requiring over 1,000 person-months to implement underperformed while 100% of projects requiring over 2,400 person-months to implement underperformed. In contrast, projects requiring under 500 person-months to implement underperformed less than 38% of the time. Underperformance here means going significantly over budget, being significantly behind schedule, or having significantly reduced scope.

The IT industry in general is appallingly deficient in good statistics. One reads so much about ...

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