waterfall (was Re: REPOST: Re: Book "python programming patterns". anybody read this??)

[brueckd at tbye.com]

On 7 Jan 2002, Andrew Kuchling wrote:

> "John Roth" <johnroth at ameritech.net> writes:
> > Unfortunately, that's the way Government projects work. Until
>
> Isn't that the way all projects, government or not, work?  I remember
> horrifying numbers quoted in places such as Robert Glass's column in
> Comm. of the ACM to the effect that 50% (or maybe it was 60%, or 90%)
> of projects fail by either not producing a deliverable, or producing
> a deliverable that doesn't work, or by producing a working deliverable
> that doesn't solve the problem.

I don't know about all projects in general, but for "large" projects (ones
that were planned to take a year or more to create) the number was much
closer to 90% than 50%. Worse, the majority of both successes and failures
tend to be way over budget too.

-Dave