1. Software Development Project Success Survey 2007
Scott W. Ambler
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

2. How To Use These Slides
I have provided these slides, and the raw data behind them, so that others can use them in their own work.
You may reuse all, or a part of, this slide deck as long as you provide a clear reference to the source.
The suggested reference is: Results from Scott Ambler’s August 2007 Software Development Project Success Survey posted at
Most slides have “speaker notes”
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

3. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
The Survey
August 2007
sent to DDJ mailing list
586 respondents
54% were developers/modelers, 30% were in management
73% had 10+ years in IT
13% worked in orgs of IT people
84% worked in commercial firms
69% North American, 18% European
Overall goal was to explore how IT professionals define project success.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

4. Breakdown of Respondents
Organization Type:
Commercial/Private: 490
Government: 96
Position Type:
Business stakeholder: 18
IT Non-Manager: 364
Data professional: 22
Developer/modeler: 315
Operations/Support 10
QA/Test: 17
IT Manager: 68
Project Manager: 105
Other: 31
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

5. Overall Project Success Rate (%)
Success as defined by the respondent. See other slides for how IT professionals define success in practice
Calculated by summarizing the weighted average of each range (i.e % averages to 95%) times the number of respondents. Same approach taken for other slides too.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

6. Project Success Rate by Organization Type (%)
Success as defined by the respondent. See other slides for how IT professionals define success in practice
Calculated by summarizing the weighted average of each range (i.e % averages to 95%) times the number of respondents. Same approach taken for other slides too.
Compares commercial/private and government success rates. The government in general has a slightly lower success rate but not by much. Then again, as we see in coming slides there is a difference between commercial and government when it comes to defining success, so in a way we’re comparing apples and oranges.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

7. Project Success Rate By Role (%)
Success as defined by the respondent. See other slides for how IT professionals define success in practice
Calculated by summarizing the weighted average of each range (i.e % averages to 95%) times the number of respondents. Same approach taken for other slides too.
There wasn’t a lot of business stakeholders who responded to the survey (only 18 in total). So, we need to take the stakeholder figures with a grain of salt.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

8. Project Success Rate By Location (%)
Success as defined by the respondent. See other slides for how IT professionals define success in practice
Calculated by summarizing the weighted average of each range (i.e % averages to 95%) times the number of respondents. Same approach taken for other slides too.
Compares by location. The Asian numbers should be suspect as there was only 33 responses. Also, a lot of Asian organizations are the service providers for offshoring projects so they may consider their work more successful than their actual clients. There was 107 European responses and 373 U.S. responsess.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

9. Defining Success: Summary
61.3% believe that delivering when the system is ready to be shipped is more important than delivering on schedule
79.6% believe that providing the best ROI is more important than delivering under budget
87.3% believe that meeting actual needs of stakeholders is more important than building the system to specification
87.3% believe that delivering high quality is more important than delivering on time and on budget
75.8% believe that having a healthy workplace is more important than delivering on time and on budget
It is critical to understand how people actually define process success. The definition of “on time, on budget, meeting the spec” doesn’t seem to hold when we actually ask people what they value.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

10. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Time/Schedule: Delivering when the system is ready to be shipped is more important than delivering on schedule (%)
Much of the traditional rhetoric is that it’s important to deliver on time, yet apparently it’s more important for the majority of people to deliver a system when it’s actually ready.
It’s interesting to note that PMs were most out of sync with the business.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

11. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Money: Providing the best ROI is more important than delivering under budget (%)
Appears that spending the money wisely is far more important than delivering under budget, yet the majority of firms still insist on up-front estimates even though it promotes significantly poor practices (such as detailed requirements documentation early in the lifecycle) throughout the rest of the project. See for some detailed thoughts on this subject.
Out of the groups of people, once again the PMs were most out of sync with the business
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

12. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Scope: Meeting actual needs of stakeholders is more important than building the system to specification (%)
People by far are most interested in building software that people actually want instead of building something to spec. This is completely out of sync with practice on traditional projects.
See for why doing a spec up front is a really poor practice
This time IT mgmt was most out of sync with the business and PMs were best aligned with them.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

13. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Quality: Delivering high quality is more important than delivering on time and on budget (%)
Everyone believes quality is the number one issue.
Once again, the PMs are most out of sync with the business
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

14. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Staff: Having a healthy workplace is more important than delivering on time and on budget (%)
This is really disappointing, particularly the business’s attitude towards a healthy workplace.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

15. Relative Ranking of the Five Success Factors
All/ Commercial / Govt / IT Mgmt
Stakeholders
Non-Mgmt IT
Project Management 1
Quality 2
Scope
Staff 3
Time 4
Money 5
Respondents were asked to rank by order of importance each of the five previous success factors.
Note: Rankings identical for All, Commercial, Government, and IT Management
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

16. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Cancellation: Considers cancelling a troubled project to be a success (%)
I have always believed that if a project team gets into trouble it should either be redirected so as to get it out of trouble or the project should be cancelled. I was shocked to discover that on average only 40.9% of respondents felt that cancelling a troubled project should be considered successful. Worse yet, only 33.3% of business stakeholders felt this way and only 35.7% within the public (government) sector. In my opinion when a questionable project is started then may you have portfolio management problems, although if the project was good at the beginning and then it ran into trouble then redirecting or cancelling it is a reflection of good portfolio management.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler

17. Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler www.ambysoft.com/surveys/
Poor Starts: Been on a project that they knew would fail right from the start (%)
Sadly 73.3% of business stakeholders, 78.2% of project managers, and 76.9% of IT managers also indicated this. In other words, the people in a position to get the project on the right track, or at least in a position to influence the people who could do so, couldn’t do anything about it. Granted, they may not have been in decision-making positions when they ran into such a situation. Then again they’re now in these positions and are aware of the problem, so hopefully we’ll see this problem diminish over time.
Copyright 2007 Scott W. Ambler