History of Software Failure

History of Software Failure

The history of software development is an incredible success. Just look around us for evidence of that. But that success has a long, dark shadow that we don’t talk about very much: it’s littered with huge failures. What’s particularly disturbing is that the vast failures keep recurring year after year. The names and dollar amounts may vary, but the story is otherwise the similar. Most software projects fail fully or partially because they don’t meet all their requirements. These requirements can be the cost, time, quality, and software functional or non-functional requirements. According to many studies, the failure rate of software projects ranges between 50% - 80%. To cope these problems software development process is used. The software development process easily utilizes the resource and minimizes the risk. 

The latest report, notes that success in 68 percent of technology projects is unbelievable. Low requirements analysis causes many of these failures, meaning projects are damned right from the start. According to IBM study, only 40% of projects meet schedule, budget, and quality goals.  Further, they found that the biggest barriers to success are people factors. Geneca, a software development company, noted from its studies that fuzzy business objectives, out of sync stakeholders and excessive rework mean that 75% of project participants need confidence that their projects will succeed.

On Mars mission in 1998 the Climate Orbiter spacecraft was eventually lost in space. Although the failure confused engineers for some time it was exposed that a sub contractor on the engineering team failed to build a simple conversion from English units to metric. An uncomfortable lapse that sent the $125 million craft deadly close to Mars surface after attempting to stabilize its orbit too low. Flight controllers think the spacecraft ploughed into Mars atmosphere where the connected stresses crippled its interactions, leaving it hurtling on during space in an orbit around the sun.

In 1996, Arian-5 space rocket, developed at the cost of $7000 million over a time of 10 years was destroyed within less than a minute after its launch. The crash occurred because there was a software bug in the rocket guidance system. In 1996, one of the largest banks of US credited accounts of nearly 800 customers with approximately $924 1acs. Later, it was detected that the problem occurred due to a programming bug in the banking software.

Year 2000 (Y2K) problem refers to the extensive snags in processing dates after the year 2000. The roots of Y2K problem can be traced back to 1960-80 when developers shortened the 4-digit date format like 1972 to a 2-digit format like 72 because of limited memory. At that time we did not realize that year 2000 will be shortened to 00 which is less than 72. In the 1990s, experts began to understand this main shortcoming in the computer application and then millions were spent to grip this problem.

The Northeast blackout in 2003 has been one of the main power system failures in the history of North America. This blackout involved failure of 100 power plants due to which almost 50 million customers faced power loss that resulted in financial loss of approximately $6 billion. Afterward, it was determined that the main reason behind the failure was a software bug in the power monitoring and management system.

In 2004, EDS introduce a highly complex IT system to the U.K.’s child support agency (CSA). At the same time, the department for work and pensions (DWP) decided to reorganize the entire agency. The two pieces of software were totally incompatible and permanent errors were introduced as a result. The system someway managed to overpay 1.9 million people, underpay another 700,000, had $7 billion in uncollected child support payments, 36,000 latest cases stuck in the system, a backlog of 239,000 cases, and has cost the UK taxpayers over $1 billion to date.

Bitcoin Hack, Mt. Gox Launched in 2010, Japanese bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was the main in the world. Once being hacked in June, 2011, Mt. Gox stated that they’d lost over 850,000 bitcoins (value around half a billion US dollars at the time of writing). Although around 200,000 of the bitcoins were recovered, Mark Karpeles admits “We had weaknesses in our system and our bitcoins vanished.” Leaving thousands of Mt. Gox clients out of pocket, 32 year old, France born, Mark Karpeles is presently on trial for embezzlement and a number of other charges. Karpeles has pled not guilty but if found guilty, Karpeles could be sent to jail for up to 5 years and fined up to ($4000) .

Millions of TSB customers were locked out of their accounts after an IT upgrading led to an online banking outage.  A planned system upgrade was estimated to shut internet and mobile banking services down for one weekend in April 2018 but ended up causing months of disturbance. The problems arose from TSB’s shift to a novel banking platform following its divide from Lloyds Banking Group. Instantly after the latest system was switched on numerous users experienced problems logging in while others were revealed details from other people’s accounts or erroneous credits and debits on their own. Customers remained locked out of their accounts two weeks once the primary outage. In July 2018, TSB was still working its way through the backlog of complaints when a different outage struck, locking customers away of their online accounts once again. TSB claimed that the crisis was resolved later that day but the debacle will crack the bank’s relationship with parent company Sabadell.

In 2018, hospital staff and doctors of the Wales NHS qualified a widespread computer failure that led to them being incapable to access patient files. According to the national cyber security centre, the failure was owed to technological issues as opposed to a cyber attack however it still caused wide disturbance as unable to access blood, X-Ray results, and etc. It also caused a backlog as patients could not be contacted to cancel appointments and notes could not be typed up and saved on NHS systems . 

The reasons for software failure refer to the lack of presence of success factor for the software project. Some important factors for software failure:

1. Inadequate Project Planning: Project planning is a central part of project management and it is the responsibility of the project manager to set an appropriate plan for the project.
2. Scope Creep: Scope creep refers to change in scope of the project and also known as requirement creep or feature creep. The scope is the work required for a project. Scope creep refers to how the requirements of a project keep on varying over a project lifecycle. 
3. Use of Unpracticed Tools and Techniques: Good tools and techniques are required for the success of a software project. A universal illusion is made by the project manager and team leader to utilize unpracticed tools and techniques at the preliminary of project.
4. Shortage of Resources/Requirements: Every project requires some resources according to requirement and need. The quantity of resources depends on the size and scope of the project. Sometimes, the project is unreachable due to the shortage of resources and necessary requirements.
5. No or Poor Risk Management: At present, we have to deal with some real facts in project management. Poor or no risk management has the capability to influence the project management. Project failure is the worst case of poor risk management. Some of the most vital influences on the poor risk management are given as:

• Project failure
• Slow- running projects
• Risk of reputation damage
• Superfluity budget
• Unresponsive customers and less user adoption
• Inactive benefits

Poor risk management is one of the major contributors to project failure and had a negative impact on project success.

6. Lack of User Engagement: A project which is aimed at developing various products is going to have especial users i.e. a group of people who does business at the organization.

7. Poor Controlling and Monitoring: Controlling and monitoring are the necessary parts of project management. A project can succeed only when there is suitable governance for the project management. Without proper planning and monitoring, the project may fail. The absence of controlling and monitoring impacts the project in many ways:

• Difference in cost, scope, and schedule baselines
• Project may not be finished on time as expected
• Quality of the output can be degraded
• Organization figure will damage
• Opposition between project team can be raised
• Poor project performance
• Unsatisfied user

8. Inexperienced Project Managers: Project failure is a widespread term that every project manager wants to split from. No one craves to take the responsibility of project failure as it may blot his career record. But if a project fails, then it simply means that project manager did a unfortunate job. Ensure that the project manager has sufficient knowledge of what the best techniques are because hiring of well skilled project manager can’t be mislaid.

9. Ineffective Communication: Project team knows their manager only through his communications. Whether it a project, an operation or personal life, communication plays an important role. Without communication, we are executing tasks in the dark area. Project managers should develop a communication plan. Even time to time meet-ups should be planned to discuss the project performance.
 
10.Poor Project Management: When there is no proper management for project then the project may fail due to poor management. If a project is decently staffed, proper planning, have a good WBS, availability of resources, proper scheduling, and the support of sponsors but even gets fail then the simply reason behind it is that project management was poor.
Fortunately, all is not gone.  Here are five steps to improving the people based factors affecting IT delivery:

1. Freeze the technology/business relationship via governance
2. Integrate technology intro strategic planning
3. Set and share a simple, multi-year roadmap for overall business strategy
4. Establish an open planning process
5. Teach and promote communication and relationship skills

We believe if we view IT projects as not just a technology problem and consider the people factors then software organization will boost its implementation success, create better relationships, and maximize its return on investment (ROI). So, it becomes important for the project manager to know which factors can result in project failure. It will help to focus on those factors while managing the software project.

References: "Systems and Software Process", published by Narosa Publication Delhi 2020