4/19/2007

It's less chaotic today than it was yesterday

SD Times reviews the new, 2006 Chaos Report from the Standish Group. According the article:

35 percent of software projects started in 2006 can be categorized as
successful, meaning they were completed on time, on budget and met user
requirements.

I'm not sure if 35 percent is a good number, but it surely beats 16.2 percent in the 1994 report.

It would be nice to know how the size and complexity of average software project has developed during those 12 years. Maybe that is in the report, we just have to wait a bit more (and get 500$ for the report from somewhere).

The report lists three reasons for the improvement:
  • better project management,
  • iterative development, and
  • the emerging Web infrastructure.

I don't know if better project management in this context means agile project management. A quote “Managers have a better understanding of the dynamics of a project.” hints to that direction. Iterative development at least is something that we believe is essential for success, and it is nice to get more and more data to show that. Web infrastructure plays quite insignificant role in firmware development.

If you happen to know recent data about new product development success rate in general, or maybe even embedded software numbers, I would be most interested seeing them.

No comments: