How to Save a Failing Project: Chaos to Control - Brossura

Young, Ralph R.; Brady, Steve M.; Nagle Jr., Dennis C.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1567262392 ISBN 13: 9781567262391

Casa editrice: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009

Riassunto

You CAN Turn Around A Failing Project! Poor project results are all too common and result in dissatisfied customers, users, and project staff. With countless people, goals, objectives, expectations, budgets, schedules, deliverables, and deadlines to consider, it can be difficult to keep projects in focus and on track. How to Save a Failing Project: Chaos to Control arms project managers with the tools and techniques needed to address these project challenges. The authors provide guidance to develop a project plan, establish a schedule for execution, identify project tracking mechanisms, and implement turnaround methods to avoid failure and regain control. With this valuable resource you will be able to: • Identify key factors leading to failure • Learn how to recover a failing project and minimize future risk • Better analyze your project by defining proper business objectives and goals • Gain insight on industry best practices for planning

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Ralph R. Young, DBA, has led projects in local government, management information systems, systems and software engineering, process improvement, and systems integration. He is the author of four books that address aspects of requirements engineering. Dr. Young is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and holds an MA in economics and a DBA from The George Washington University.
Steve M. Brady, PMP, has worked extensively in the information technology industry, providing project management, organizational process development, business analysis, and strategic planning services. Mr. Brady holds a BS in management of information systems and an MBA from Wright State University.
Dennis C. Nagle, Jr., has spent more than 20 years as an engineer on project teams, both as a programmer and also as the principal software architect. He is certified in the personal software process (PSP) as defined by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Nagle holds a BS in Computer Science from Virginia Tech and an MS in Computer Science from Wright State University.

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How to Save a Failing Project

Chaos to Control

By Ralph R. Young, Steven M. Brady, Dennis C. Nagle Jr.

Management Concepts Press

Copyright © 2009 Management Concepts, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-56726-239-1

Contents

FOREWORD, 
PREFACE, 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 
INTRODUCTION, 
PART I Project awareness: How to Recognize a Failing Project, 
CHAPTER 1 why Projects Fail, 
CHAPTER 2 Is Your Project Out of Control?, 
Part II Project Planning: How to Recover a Failing Project, 
CHAPTER 3 Analyzing Your Project, 
CHAPTER 4 why create a Plan?, 
CHAPTER 5 creating the Plan, 
CHAPTER 6 Building a Team, 
CHAPTER 7 Identifying the Products, 
CHAPTER 8 Identifying the work, 
CHAPTER 9 Establishing a Schedule, 
PART III Project Execution: How to Minimize the Risk of Future Failure, 
CHAPTER 10 Executing the Plan, 
CHAPTER 11 Managing External and Internal Expectations, 
CHAPTER 12 Managing Scope, 
CHAPTER 13 Managing Quality, 
CHAPTER 14 Optimizing the Plan, 
FINAL THOUGHTS A Recommended Approach for Project Success, 
ACRONYMS, 
GLOSSARY, 
REFERENCES, 
INDEX, 

CHAPTER 1

Why Projects Fail

The data on project success rates are alarming. According to the Standish Group's CHAOS Report, based on biennial surveys of software project outcomes, about 75 percent of all software projects are delivered late or fail. The data also show that since 2002, the rate of successful project completion has dropped significantly.

Delayed projects are not problematic simply because they are late. On a late project, significant planned functionality is often discarded in an effort to stay on schedule and keep costs down. So the average schedule overrun of about 120 percent and average cost overrun of 100 percent shown in Figure 1-1 are significantly understated. Completing projects often takes more than twice as long and costs twice as much as we estimate! How can it be that we haven't made progress in delivering software on time or under budget? In 1981, Barry Boehm provided a seven-step approach to estimating software projects in Software Engineering Economics. Yet most projects today do not use even this level of discipline in preparing estimates.

Steve McConnell, author of Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art, writes, "The industry data show that the software industry has an underestimation problem. Before we can make our estimates more accurate, we need to start making the estimates bigger. That is the key challenge for many organizations." Industry expert Capers Jones writes that the root cause of project failure is poor project management, not technical issues or the competence and ability of technical personnel.

The failure to adequately plan using useful and effective measures is the root cause of project failure. This book will enable you to save a failing project. Even better, it will enable you to manage projects while reducing the risk of failure.

Key Factors Leading to Failure

While many factors lead to the failure of a project, in the authors' experience, a few specific, easily recognizable factors signal serious problems that jeopardize project success:

* Poorly defined requirements

* Scope creep

* Stakeholders have different expectations

* Stakeholders have unrealistic expectations

* There is no real need or demand for the product

* There is a lack of user involvement in the project

* Change management is lacking or ineffective

* Poor quality control

*

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1567262392
• ISBN 13: 9781567262391
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 264
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: GPSR Europäische Union; hello@eucompliancepartner.com; ; Pärnu mnt 139b-14; Tallinn; 11317; Estonia