July 18, 2005

How To Prevent Tech Project Failures

Often times, when implementing technology projects things can go wrong. But things DON'T have to go wrong if you start correctly. Inc Magazine advises

-Make sure developers understand what users really need.
-Throw together a rough prototype to bounce off users.
-Break the contract into pieces.

Inc Magazine writes "More than half the large custom systems that are started never reach users," says Joseph Goguen, a computer science researcher at the University of California at San Diego. "Usually they're just canceled, but sometimes they're declared a success and then not used." Small and midsize businesses build these clunkers by the tens of thousands, too, he addsóand often blow a larger percentage of revenue on them to boot.

That's what happened to Coast Guardian's Moody. Six years ago, reeling from the costs and delays from the paperwork involved in running background checks on job applicants, Moody wondered why he couldn't do it all online. He hired a systems developer. Two years and $20,000 later, the system still wasn't working, and the developer had stopped returning calls. "I could have hunted him down, of course," says Moody. "But what for? The money was gone. And $20,000 was a big hit to us then." Read the full Inc Magazine article.

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