Before searching for solutions to the negative factors threatening your development project success, look through the most common challenges in software development. Here you can find some ideas on how to save your time and money.
There are many challenges in managing software development projects. The following list discusses a few topics that have been highlighted as common challenges of software development. The list is not exhaustive, it does however highlight some of the common challenges I have encountered and addressed over the past 10 years working in software development.
Interpersonal skills – managing the stakeholders
Every IT project is also a business project, interaction with the business is a must. When declaring a project, I always insist on having non-IT project owners and stakeholders. Even the most back-office related project needs to be reported to the business. I have recently participated in a project to provide new desktops to members of my organisation. A key part of the project was to involve members of the business to articulate requirements and to evaluate potential options for a desktop replacement.
Interpersonal skills are very important and every IT manager needs to posses in order to be successful. Managing IT projects of any type (software development, security, etc…) will require a lot of interaction with other members of the business. Establishing and nurturing a healthy relationship between IT and other business units should be one of the priorities for any manager within the IT department.
Unfortunately many IT managers fail to address this topic and in doing so they minimise their chances of conducting successful projects.
Business requirements – the uncertainty factor
One of the main challenges in software development is gathering clear business requirements. When a project fails, many IT managers blame the lack of clear business requirements or the lack of communication from the business to notify them of changing requirements. I personally think that IT managers should take responsibility for their projects, stop blaming and start acting on it.
In my experience, business users may think they are communicating their requirements clearly, but once the software is built they realise that they asked for the wrong functionality. This happens way too often. One of the possible strategies to address this issue is to use an agile methodology that builds the system in increments and gets the business users to review every increment built. This way if the requirement is not addressed as the users expect, the issue can be dealt with before the system is live. This can save a lot of time and money.
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