While a .320 batting average might get you a spot in the top of any Major League Baseball line-up, a 68% failure rate isn’t going to give you much of a return in the business world. But a 68% failure rate is exactly what you can expect when it comes to business technology projects, according to a new report put out by IAG Consulting.
What’s the chief cause of a better than two-thirds failure rate for business technology projects? Poor requirements analysis. In other words, more often than not, requirements aren’t fully understood, or even identified, before a project kicks into gear.
IAG Consulting’s report makes formal what those involved with business technology projects have known with their gut for years—chiefly, that you have to know what you want to do and what it takes to do it before put boots on the ground and attempt to get it done. Among the report’s findings:
- Companies lacking the ability to perform good business analysis will fail in three projects for every one project that succeeds.
- A 60% premium on time and budget is normal for projects at companies that routinely write poor requirements.
- Over 41% of the money budgeted for software, staff, and external professional services will be consumed by poor requirements.
In other words, if you don’t really know what you want, and you’re not sure what makes up what you really want, you’re more than likely going to waste time, money, and energy trying to come up with something that approximates what you had in mind. And what you come up with, eventually, is going to be so far from what you wanted, and so riddled with bugs and other imperfections, that it might have been better not to build anything at all.
Thus, the question is begged: what is good business analysis? Good business analysis is being able to identify business needs and solutions that satisfy those needs. A good business analyst is a broad thinker, one who can approach a business problem in a syncretic, creative manner. Good business analysis involves an incredible amount of research: market research, competitive research, consumer research, technological research, and historical research. But perhaps the most important research is user research, for by identifying what users want and need in a business solution, and by having the fortitude to follow through and deliver those wants and needs, a business analyst worth his or her weight in salt can almost ensure a well-received launch.