TABLE OF CONTENTS Project management and software engineering is the technical and managerial discipline concerned with the systematic invention, production, and maintenance of high quality software products delivered on time, at minimum cost. Given this statement, in this decade of the twenty-first century the complexity of the marketplace, the rapid change in technologies and the global shortage of skilled IT staff place unprecedented business risks on customers and suppliers alike. To emphasize this point, in 1985 the worldwide software costs were 140 billion; in 1995, this figure had risen to 450 billion at a growth rate of 12 per cent per year. The projected expenditure is estimated to be 1400 billion by 2005.
Given this situation, global IT software suppliers and system integration organizations face challenges like never before. The global IT software industry stands to lose billions each year in project overruns, and reworking software. In my experience, as much as 40 per cent of software development costs alone can be spent reworking software, and on a global scale this represents a tidy sum. Furthermore, on average only one in six software projects will be delivered on time and to budget, and in some large organizations only 10 per cent of their projects will come in on time and to budget. Even when these projects are completed, many are no more than a mere shadow of their original application requirements.
These claims are substantiated by the historical research undertaken by the Standish Group...
