unsuccessful project development causes?

Question

You are an auditor in charge of providing quality assurance for a project to developing a raw materials control system for a major manufacturer of digital telephones. Your development budget is R 500 000. Approximately how much money should you devote to each phase of the development life cycle? List ways your company can fail to satisfy the contract, and what are the probable causes of such failures.

Answer 1

Step 1: Invest a few dollars in Fred Brook's excellent book "The Mythical Man Month". Read it. Understand it. Use it. It's still the classic book on software project management.

Step 2: Clarify. Is the *total* budget R 500K, or is the auditing budget 500K? This sort of lack of detail is often how projects go astray...

Step 3: There are *many* ways a company can fail to satisfy the contract - but the exact details will, of course, depend on the wording of the contract. I've seen more than one case where a vendor delivered a totally unusable software system - but it fulfilled the contract because the customer had failed to specify enough about what the package had to perform. And the probable causes are *so* company-specific that it's not worth listing..

Step 4: Learn to disguise homework problems better. :)