Underestimating the complexity of the problem in Project Management

Businesses still struggle to define their requirements well enough that app dev will be able to judge how rich the functionality will have to be. As one systems development EVP explained, “The most frequent problem I find in projects going wildly astray is people who define requirements at a level that doesn’t permit understanding of the complexity.” When app dev doesn’t properly understand how functionally complex the implementation needs to be, the project fails to meet business needs, but this is often not discovered until the project is nearly complete. The project then executes an unplanned iteration: The business elaborates further on the requirements, and app dev builds what was missing in its first attempt. Schedule and budget end up far exceeding initial estimates. Shops that use Agile processes are less likely to suffer from this problem, as they expose early deliverables to business customers, find out quickly whether they’re on track, and change course instead of remaining wedded to the original trajectory.