The Standish Group just released the summary version of their 2009 CHAOS  Report that tracks project failure rates across a broad range of companies and industries.   From their press release:

“This year’s results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding which are delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions” says Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group, “44% were challenged which are late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions and 24% failed which are cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used.”

There’s only one place where failing 68% of the time means you are a hero: baseball.  If you’re batting average is over .300, you’re earning a fat paycheck in Major League Baseball.  But in the software development world, batting .320 is a dismal number.  Makes you wonder why more IT leaders aren’t getting replaced!

“These numbers represent a downtick in the success rates from the previous study, as well as a significant increase in the number of failures”, says Jim Crear, Standish Group CIO, “They are low point in the last five study periods. This year’s results represent the highest failure rate in over a decade”

When are companies going to stop wasting billions of dollars on failed projects?  The vast majority of this waste is completely avoidable; simply get the right business needs (requirements) understood early in the process.  

When the design of physical products moved from drafting boards to CAD, 3D visualization and modeling tools, the issues of failure due to poor requrements disappeared.  It’s time the software industry took a page from that lesson book and did the same.