Project Management

Here at LevelTen we have a few book clubs going on. Right now, one of the books we are reading is Agile Estimation and Planning. LevelTen is in the process of implementing an iterative development process which seems to make great sense for small to mid-level Web projects.

Web projects are strange beasts. There are out-of-the-box tools that provide a ton of value. Still small firms with small budgets often have need for custom development that is often prohibitively expensive. The tools to do great things cheaply and quickly just aren't there yet (but progress is being made rapidly).

For those of you familiar with a traditional project management process, you’re probably familiar with a typical project life cycle- plan, budget, design, develop, test and release, AKA waterfall. This style of management can typically be found in fixed-bid projects. You may be less familiar with the percentage of projects that utilize this management process, yet fail to stay within the project’s intended time line, budget and scope.

According to the “Chaos Report”, a project management study on software development companies:

…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. This is a marked improvement from the first, groundbreaking report in 1994 that labeled only 16.2 percent of projects as successful…

35 percent! Almost two out of every three software development or integration projects are failures. If you are not planning on selling services or merchandise on your site, collecting customer data or statistics, or updating site content via a content management system, you can probably rest assured your project will not be a total failure. However, if you are planning on utilizing any or all of these features into your website, I highly recommend you continue reading.

While there are 4 project life cycles adopted for software and web development, LevelTen primarily works within the Waterfall (also known as Serial) and Iterative cycles. While all project life cycles provide advantages and disadvantages, these two have been widely accepted and adopted by software, IT, and web companies alike.

For those of you familiar with a traditional project management process, you’re probably familiar with a typical project lifecycle- plan, budget, design, develop, test and release. You may be less familiar with the percentage of projects that utilize this management process, yet fail to stay within the project’s intended timeline, budget and scope.

According to the “Chaos Report”, a project management study on software development companies:

I was doing some research on the adoption rate of agile development methodologies in corporations and came across this great quote in a CIO magazine article:

The CHAOS Report is a study based on The Standish Group’s CHAOS Research Project on IT project success rates and project management best practices. The study is often cited as the de facto authority on success rates of IT projects. It was started in 1994 and reported that only a startling low 16.2% of IT projects are successful. Successful projects are defined as meeting all the requirements of the project management iron triangle; on time, on budget and on scope. The CHAOS reports classifies projects into: