{"id":2702,"date":"2020-06-08T05:38:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-08T05:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceo-worldwide.com\/blog\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2025-03-03T10:15:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T10:15:27","slug":"building-enterprise-application-to-withstand-project-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceo-worldwide.com\/blog\/building-enterprise-application-to-withstand-project-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Building An Enterprise Application to Withstand Project Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New end-to-end enterprise application platforms let you produce high-fidelity application prototypes that reduce risks of failure or overruns.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IT Projects Face New Requirements and Old Challenges<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The evolution of Cloud Computing and Rich Internet Applications (RIA) has brought about some fundamental changes in IT that is drawing attention to how IT projects are being managed and paid for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real goal of software development is the fulfillment and delivery of requirements<\/strong>. Yet, the puzzling reality is that (according to NIST) (1) 70% of the defects in a delivered enterprise application are injected during a project\u2019s requirements and design phase, and 60% of those are discovered only during user acceptance testing! At that point, the cost of fixing defects is 20 times higher compared to if the problem were fixed during the design phase.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent study(2) by IAG Consulting found that more than two thirds of companies are likely to have a marginally successful technology project or outright project failure. Half of this number experience project \u2018runaways\u2019 which take too long to deliver, consume too much budget, or under-deliver on functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that while computing power and development tools have improved tremendously over the years, the proportion of project failures nevertheless remain unreasonably high \u2013 making IT projects particularly unappealing for organizations attempting to improve competitiveness in today\u2019s recession climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Need for Testing and QA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to Gartner Research, \u201cThe lack of testing and QA standards, as well as a lack of consistency, often lead to business disruption, which can be costly.\u201d(3) Gartner also reports that \u201ctesting consumes 25% to 50% of the average enterprise application life cycle and often is viewed as adding no business value.\u201d(4)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, then something is being lost in translation. It seems that making an enterprise application fit to the corporate requirements and standards of the organization is an increasingly bigger challenge that is still frequently overlooked or taken for granted as an unavoidable evil<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing Complexity and Communication Issues<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The problem may lie in the fact that business technology infrastructure has largely failed to address the growing complexity of the projects they are designed to support. Software projects today involve multiple entities \u2013 requiring the active input of professionals from various IT and business departments<\/strong>. And there is a big difference in the way most IT professionals and business managers reason and solve problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Largely speaking, IT professionals are often \u201cprocess\u201d centric, preferring structured information and algorithmic definitions (do this, make a decision and then do that). Business managers meanwhile, are more \u201cinteraction\u201d centric, prefer loosely structured and rather interactive information (messages, meetings) and declarative definitions (table\/choice driven).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u2018communication gap\u2019 can lead to situations where teams find themselves continually revising projects where specs are not properly defined, or where discrepancies arise between business requirements and the finished enterprise application<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Metadata Application Platforms Offer a Way Out<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To solve the problem organizations need to carefully select technology that will support and encourage sound business analysis procedures and facilitate collaboration. A new breed of end-to-end application platforms is already available and may offer a way out. Products such as UNIPaaS feature a single metadata-driven development and declarative paradigm to facilitate and shorten the application development cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metadata platforms work by substituting hard-coded business logic with lighter-weight code, or \u2018metadata\u2019. By abstracting the technological complexities from the development process, business managers and IT experts finally find themselves on the same page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n