Project for Success

Questioning the Role of Requirements Engineering in the Causes of Safety-Critical Software Failures by C. W. Johnson and C. M. Holloway questions the usual blame placed on inadequate requirements engineering for software project failures (safety-critical software). The paper is here.

The paper then presents the following list as root causes of the project failure identified incorrectly under inadequate requirements engineering.

1. lack of stakeholder involvement
2. incorrect environmental assumptions
3. communications failures within development teams
4. inadequate conflict management
5. lack of contextual detail

I find #4 interesting in particular. We suffered a bit from #4 in current project. The project required input from different departments (marketing, operation, client service and etc) which had different interests. It was a difficult process to draw a decision to everyone's satisfaction. The lesson was to work out conflict resolution process early among stakeholders.

It is a great checklist for early phase of a software project and a great starting point for discussion with project sponsors & project leaders.

See Alistair Cockburn's blog about the paper.