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A SquareBear insight

Why do products fail?

Gartner forecast that the world will spend 5.1 trillion dollars in 2024. This represents a 8% increase from the year before.[1]. Which is amazing considering that we are not very good at building and maintaining technology. A recent study of Global IT projects from Gitnux Market Data, only 14% of software projects are successful [2].

This means that the IT industry will spend 4.6 trillion dollars on failed projects. This is the equivalent of building 25,000 large hospitals or solve world hunger for 17 years [3].

This puts into perspective the importance of solving this problem and redirecting at least some of this money to better uses.

So why do IT projects fail? PWC identified the following 10 reasons for IT project failure [4]:

  1. Lack of shared vision caused by limited trust and collaboration.
  2. Misaligned clarity and priority of requirements
  3. Not being clear on who’s in charge.
  4. Slow or weak governance
  5. Underinvestment in guardrails
  6. Manual mayhem
  7. Focusing on the wrong things
  8. Forgetting about operations
  9. Security as a ‘bolt-on’
  10. Confusing agile with reduced rigour

Successfully delivering your product and meeting the customers’ needs requires a team with great skill and experience who keep the  above considerations in mind, as well as delivering their specific domain expertise.

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Product teams are made up of domain experts who create value for each other’s work. To benefit from this collaboration meticulous attention to detail and correct translation of insights and information between domains is paramount, as minor oversights can escalate into significant challenges.

SquareBear’s vision is to reduce the risk of IT product failure, eliminate silos in product teams and to elevate what is possible.

Our platform is designed from ground up to address all the above reasons that products fail.

Talk us and join our mission to stop waste.

References

[1] ‘Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 6.8% in 2024’, Gartner. Accessed: Apr. 03, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/01-17-2024-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-six-point-eight-percent-in-2024

[2] ‘Software Project Failure Statistics [Fresh Research] • Gitnux’. Accessed: Apr. 03, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://gitnux.org/software-project-failure-statistics/

[3] ‘Zero Hunger: Understanding the SDG Goal and Strategies for Achievement’. Accessed: Apr. 04, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.graygroupintl.com/blog/zero-hunger

[4] PricewaterhouseCoopers, ‘10 reasons why large-scale IT projects fail’, PwC. Accessed: Apr. 03, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.pwc.com.au/digitalpulse/large-scale-it-project-fail.html