The Curious Case of the CHAOS Report 2009

The Standish Group collects information on project failures in the IT industry and environments with the objective of making the industry more successful and to show ways to improve its success rates and increase the value of the IT investments. The latest results have been compiled into the CHAOS Report 2009 published by the organisation in April.

Problem: it measures success by only looking at whether the projects were completed on time, on budget and with required features and functions (met user requirements). What happened to the rest of the "six triple constraints!"

The organisation leaves out of its measures the quality, the risk, and customer satisfaction. Not that we are complaining. They have the right to measure whatever they want and we have stated before that we have to consider the CHAOS Report results in a recent article on my theory on why IT projects fail. But we, PMs, already know that all these measurements work in tandem and need to keep this in mind.

The report shows that software projects now have a 32% success rate compared to 35% from the previous study in 2006 and 16% in 1994. On the other hand, 44% of projects were challenged (late, over budget and/or with less than the required features and functions) while 24% failed (cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used).

So, must we conclude that project success is a little worse than in 2006 (32% vs. 35%) but definitely better than in 1994 (16%)? For sure, there is better project management expertise (more certified project managers), better training, and better tools and techniques. On the other hand, project complexity and environments have increased while the time to deliver has been reduced. Look at the table above and make your own conclusions.

In our opinion, project success in IT has improved when looking at all the many angles that are not being considered by the CHAOS Report. Nevertheless, the figures are still low and need to improve much more.

Still, the CHAOS Report continues to be an important measure for the IT industry in spite leaving a lot of curious minds wandering about the methods used. Don't you think so...? Well, I do.

Jorge Dominguez wrote the article "The Curious Case of the CHAOS Report 2009" and recommends you visit www.Expiriance.com  for more information about project management.