Subject: Rate of failure of Israeli software projects?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 21:07:25 +0300

The other day I saw an item concerning "Agile Development" and it
mentioned, among other things, that very high percentage of software
development projects fail.

This was in American environment, with the known politics, power games,
and management practices prevalent there.

I wonder whether things are any different here in Israel.  And when
Israeli projects fail, is there any common cause due to the
idiosyncracies of Israeli culture?
                                           --- Omer
-- 
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

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---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 22:54:00 +0300 (IDT)

> development projects fail.

to what definition of 'fail'?

> and managementpractices prevalent there.
>
> I wonder whether things are any different here in Israel.And when

again - to what definition of 'fail'?

-- 
guy

"For world domination - press 1,
 or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy

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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 22:42:21 +0300

Good question.
To have focused discussion, let's limit the scope of non-successful
projects to those, which were one or more of the following:

1. Cancelled before having been completed, after having been worked on
for at least 80% of the scheduled elapsed time AND after having spent at
least 80% of their budget.

2. Finished at schedule overrun of at least 100% AND budget overrun of
at least 100%, whether actually used by their target users or not.

3. Finished, deployed and then the users found that the developed
project is far from meeting their needs, so they did not really use it.

This is just an arbitrary definition, which I made up in order to have a
focused discussion.
                                         --- Omer

-- 
One does not make peace with enemies.  One makes peace with former
enemies.
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

---

From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 01:07:08 +0300 (IDT)

> least 80% of their budget.

what about a startup that was shut down? does this fall under this
category?

> at least 100%, whether actually used by their target users or not.

i think you just described some of microsoft's more successfully-marketed
operating systems. you'll have to revise this definition.

you also described linux kernel 2.4 - it took much much longer to finish
then initially assumed, and more work ;)

thus, i don't think this is a good definition for a "project failure".

> project is far from meeting their needs, so they did not really use it.

so we're not talking just about failure from the software-point-of-view.
we're talking now about failure from a merketing-point-of-view?

-- 
guy

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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 01:37:51 +0300

If to judge from the resulting insights, Guy Keren again asked good
questions.

The question which I would like to investigate is whether there are
fundamental traits of today's Israeli software development project
managers, which cause failures.  Accordingly, I am clarifying and
revising working definitions in the following.

> what about a startup that was shut down? does this fall under this

If a project was scheduled for completion in 10 months, and after 8.5
months it was discovered that the market conditions changed in such a
way to make the project obsolete, then this does not constitute a
failure of the project manager but of the marketing department, which
requested the project.  The failure is in predicting the market shift.

So a project carried out by a startup, which was shut down due to
shifting market conditions would not be inside the investigation's
scope.

But a startup, which fails to complete development of its product in
time belongs to the investigation.  Failure can be due to various
causes, which the project manager should have been able to foresee and
plan accordingly.

> operating systems. you'll have to revise this definition.

NO.  If the projects of developing those operating systems were better
managed, maybe the users' experience would not have been so bug-ridden.
Besides, were those projects developed in...ISRAEL?

> thus, i don't think this is a good definition for a "project failure".

Linus and his crew changed their development practices after learning
their lessons from developing kernel 2.4.  Now there are no alternating
periods of stable and development kernels.  Therefore I can argue that
they themselves considered the kernel 2.4 project to be subjected to
project mismanagement.

> we're talking now about failure from a merketing-point-of-view?

I do not know what point of view you are talking about, but I am talking
about project management point of view.  Come over, or else start your
own thread and investigation (to which I would gladly contribute
whatever I can contribute).

The specific case of project, which was completed but not usable, can be
considered to be a failure of the project manager, who did not have
enough communication with the users and did not do good enough work to
elicit their explicit, implicit, unstated and secret requirements; and
to carry out the project in such way that it meets those requirements.
                                           --- Omer
-- 
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:34:11 +1000

Every serious project should have set goals.

"Failed" should be "not reached set goals".

Reasoning - if it's just a project of "let's start writing something
just to play with technology and see where it goes" without ANY
set objects ("it will allow users to do A, B and C in first revision")
then it's not in the class of projects discussed (even its "owner"
can't define his own success or failure).

If it's a "scratch my itch" project then it already has enough goals
to start talking about success/failure.

If it's a startup then it usually have VERY well defined goals
(a business plan which had to be convincing enough for an
investor to put his money on, and I'm not talking about Kablanim
looking to "put some money in this java-java thingy")
A startup may change its original business plan, but it
still should have goals of income, revenues, badget, deliverables,
(usually software or hardware doing a defined function), valuation
etc.

How does that sound?

Cheers,

--Amos

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 08:43:00 +1000

> they themselves considered the kernel 2.4 project to be subjected to

Just because they changed development process doesn't mean that the
old process falls under definition of "mismanagement". I don't remember
the timelines or the decisions made (and I'm sure I'm not aware of lots of
these), but it could also be that the environment has changed since 2.4
began development and when it was released (companies joined the
revolution, people came and left, technologies shifted, market environment
changed, lots of other things, especially with something so huge as the
Linux project).

> to carry out the project in such way that it meets those requirements.

I agree with that.

Cheers,

--Amos

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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 10:05:18 +0300

> "Failed" should be "not reached set goals".

[... snipped ...]

> How does that sound?

If a project was 5% over schedule and 5% over budget but achieved its
set goals, then its overall management was not bad enough to serve as an
example of bad project management (although there may have been some
problematic practices).

Also, a project can be well-managed but cancelled midway due to external
causes.  Since the external causes are not project mismanagement per se,
we cannot learn from such a project.  Usually, it can be ascribed to
marketing failure of predicting the future.  But if it was one of 5
parallel projects initiated by a very rich and profitable corporation,
with the intention that one succeeds and four fail, yet the successful
one covers the expenses of all five projects - then the four
failing/cancelled projects are not necessarily mismanaged.

Now, that we have discussed criteria and clarified them a bit, can we
turn to the main subject - that of cultural influences on Israeli
project managers, which cause their projects to fail.

Are there such adverse cultural influences (the way there are in USA,
for example)?  Are there any countries, in which project managers
consistently excel, thanks to the beneficial influence of their national
management culture?
                                        --- Omer
-- 
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 18:00:45 +1000

> example of bad project management (although there may have been some

You can quantify these 5% in the goals too: "Over 5% - failed. Within 5% - goal
reached".  And so on and so forth for other resources.

(As an anacdot, I've just checked CRM solutions where a manager could set
"predicted time" and "predicted deviation").

> project managers, which cause their projects to fail.

Where do you expect to find such data?  I'd look it up in publications of
companies like Deloyt-Tusch(sp) and maybe the IDC, if it's available for
the public at all...

> consistently excel, thanks to the beneficial influence of their national

I don't know. I can only tell from my personal experience - the most well
managed software development organization I've ever seen is completly
run by Israelis (plus a russian-born R&D manager). Don't know how to
extrapolate from this or my other experience on the rest of the industry,
some are better and some are worse in any country.

--Amos

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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 13:10:42 +0300

> companies like Deloyt-Tusch(sp) and maybe the IDC, if it's available for

Lacking access to such publications, and knowing that the publications
do not capture informal anecdotes, I threw the question to the
Hackers-IL mailing list to see whether some subscribers have anything to
contribute.

> some are better and some are worse in any country.

What can you tell us about the average case - the average software
development organization in Israel (or at least among those which you
encountered)?

My own experience (which may be obsolete by now) is that I personally am
more aggressive than the average organization in developing or deploying
tools to assist them in the work.
(I remember an organization, for which I worked several years ago, in
which there was resistance to using 'make' and it was broken down only
after they added another employee in the role of 100% software
engineer.)
                                        --- Omer
-- 
MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world.
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

---

From: Ori Idan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 13:11:30 +0300

Resistance to using 'make'? why because it was hard to use or because
they did not realize the potential and the need for such a tool?

-- 

Ori Idan

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From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 17:18:01 +0300

> they did not realize the potential and the need for such a tool?

They were used to typing in the commands to build and link the modules
and were set in their ways.

The software in question was simple, though (about 3-4 modules per
build).
                                          --- Omer
-- 
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.    C. Northcote Parkinson
My own blog is at http://www.livejournal.com/users/tddpirate/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 08:38:10 +1000

> development organization in Israel (or at least among those which you

At least the ones I took part in delivered their goals and as far as I can
tell they have done so within the allocated resources (time, manpower,
badget). There were a couple of exceptions I am aware of:

1. The "Big Project" at Comverse to move the entire platform from an
ancient real-time 386 OS + PL/I + C etc to Windows NT + C++ failed,
possibly due to mis-management and unfamiliarity with the technology
and maybe also unfamiliarity with the development process they tried to
use.
(I haven't stayed there to watch the failure, I was just fed-up with
Windows NT and moved on to other projects which involved
UNIX programming).

2. During a one-year stint at Sun I was mostly responsible to help Amdocs
convert from HP to Solaris. Their way of working is to use lots of zombie-level
programmers who understand pretty much nothing at what they are doing
and just keep throwing more and more people at late projects. It works,
eventually, but at a much higher cost for the customer than he bargained for.
(who's apparently a captive by the time this happens).
You get to see wierd things in Amdocs (e.g. in parallel to the project I was
helping with, I slowly discovered three other projects to do the same (convert
their HP code to Solaris).
I don't know if this is considered "failure" since Amdocs generally succeed in
winning and retaining contracts but still their line of work is very distressing
just to be reminded about.

My refference: a few years of sub-contracting for various projects in Comverse,
and a few years of working for software startups. With side-kicks for the
army and others.

--Amos