Common technical issues we find

We often hear “this project is having technical problems, we need help on out how to remedy the issues”.  Rarely do we find  technical issues to be the root cause.

The most common issues we find are:

• Lack of process or the project is not following the process or organizational systems life cycle
• Leadership takes shortcuts because the project is taking longer than forecasted.  Commonly we find “we didn’t test” or “we only did half of the tests” due to time constraints
• Scope is not controlled

If there is a technical issue, we often find that:

• There is no documented / defined end-to-end architecture
• Design without consideration for network optimization
• Non-functional requirements such as performance, scalability, and disaster recovery are not defined
• Non-functional requirements are out of line with reality.  24×7 availability,  sub-second response time requirements for a typical business system are many times cost prohibitive and not needed
• There is no technical leader for the project
• The project is “hero based” or as some say “Rambo style”
• This is the project team’s first real development project with the exception of one person who has less than a year experience
• Unit testing is limited or non-existent
• There is no testing strategy
• Everything is re-invented.  There is no reuse strategy between or within projects
• Walk throughs are not being done
• Estimating is by the seat of the pants and not reproduceable
• Actual metrics not being taken