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The Real Cost of Poor Quality

The cost of badly designed applications can be immense, often many times the original projected budget. It may be manifested in development cost blowouts, delays in implementation or lost opportunities.

Software development is risky, with failure rates measured between 40% and 70%. With such high risks it is critical to understand the root causes of those failures and prepare accordingly, making a good choice of developer is a key part of that preparation. The following linked articles discuss the risks, reasons and instances of failures in development projects.

• The Long, Dismal History of Software Project Failure

  "... colossal failures keep recurring year after year. The names and dollar amounts may change, but the story is otherwise the same."

• Why Software Fails

  "When a project fails, it jeopardizes an organization's prospects. If the failure is large enough, it can steal the company's entire future."

• Software disasters are often people problems

  "In 90 per cent of the cases, it's because the implementer did a bad job, training was bad, the whole project was poorly done"

• MOD project scrapped

  Britain's Ministry of Defence squandered almost £120 million on a computer system that was axed before ever being used.

• 'Web rage' sends online shoppers back to the High Street

  "78 per cent of online shoppers complained that frustration with website performance has led them to turn off their computer."

• Majority of websites vulnerable to attack

  "Two out of every three websites are open to cyber attacks"

• 'Most websites' failing disabled

  Ninety seven percent of websites did not provide even minimum levels of accessibility, a new survey has found.

• Software's Chronic Crises

  "The average software development project overshoots its schedule by half; larger projects generally do worse. And some three quarters of all large systems are "operating failures" that either do not function as intended or are not used at all."

• Software Risks

  The Risks Digest details hundreds of accounts of failed projects and software defects costing many billions of dollars.

• Eighty percent of UK shopping sites are failing their customers because of unpredictable shopping carts
• Website glitch allows $US5 roundtrip tickets
• Govt may lose $1b on Seasprite project
• Airport snoop system thrown in $102m garbage can
• Software Delay Said to Cost IRS $318 Million in Overpaid Refunds
• Why Software Projects Fail (book abstracts)
• Retail websites fail access test
• US web site sued for major privacy violations
• Target Corporation sued for discriminating against persons who are blind
• Four infamous IT meltdowns
• Prescription for an I.T. Disaster?