This is a list of notable
custom software projects which have significantly failed to achieve some or all of their objectives, either temporarily or permanently, and/or have suffered from significant
cost overrun
A cost overrun, also known as a cost increase or budget overrun, involves unexpected incurred costs. When these costs are in excess of budgeted amounts due to a value engineering underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting, they are known ...
s.
Note that failed projects, and projects running over budget, are not necessarily the sole fault of the employees or businesses creating the software. In some cases, problems may be due partly to problems with the purchasing organisation, including poor
requirements
In engineering, a requirement is a condition that must be satisfied for the output of a work effort to be acceptable. It is an explicit, objective, clear and often quantitative description of a condition to be satisfied by a material, design, pro ...
, over-ambitious requirements, unnecessary requirements, poor
contract
A contract is an agreement that specifies certain legally enforceable rights and obligations pertaining to two or more parties. A contract typically involves consent to transfer of goods, services, money, or promise to transfer any of thos ...
drafting, poor contract management, poor end-user
training
Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge or fitness that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. I ...
, or poor operational management.
Permanent failures
Because software, unlike a major civil engineering construction project, is often easy and cheap to change after it has been constructed, a piece of custom software that fails to deliver on its objectives may sometimes be modified over time in such a way that it later succeeds—and/or business processes or end-user mindsets may change to accommodate the software. However, sometimes, for various reasons, neither approach succeeds (or is even tried), and this may be considered as another level of failure—a ''permanent'' failure.
Temporary issues and budget overruns
Projects with ongoing problems
Until the significant problems with these projects are resolved, or the projects cancelled, it is not yet possible to classify them into one of the above categories.
See also
*
Software crisis
Software crisis is a term used in the early days of computing science for the difficulty of writing useful and efficient computer programs in the required time. The software crisis was due to the rapid increases in computer power and the complex ...
*
Vaporware
In the computer industry, vaporware (or vapourware) is a product, typically computer Computer hardware, hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is late, never actually manufactured, or officially canceled. Use of the w ...
*
Agile software development
Agile software development is an umbrella term for approaches to software development, developing software that reflect the values and principles agreed upon by ''The Agile Alliance'', a group of 17 software practitioners, in 2001. As documented ...
*
Government waste
References
External links
The Risks Digest*
Best Practices and Measures for Success of your ERP IT Software Projects
{{DEFAULTSORT:Failed and overbudget custom software projects
Failed and overbudget custom
Failed and overbudget custom software projects