Saturday 23 March 2013

Why Application Development Projects go over Budget and Timeline?


If we talk in terms of stats, at least 82% projects go over budget and timeline. Researches have shown that there are so many reasons a project can have a cost overrun, understanding of which can go a long way for you to keep your project on track.


Incomplete or ill defined Project Scope & Planning
Project scope clearly lays down the inclusions and exclusions on the forefront even before a single line of code is written. It is a part of project planning which assists you in transferring your project ideas and vision to your web development company. It is defined keeping in minds your target audience, consumer experience, application's usability, quantitative measures & benchmarks, revenue generation model, etc. These aspects not only assist you in defining your project scope to perfection but would help your service provider to formulate a right execution strategy incorporating technical expertise requirements, the methodology, selection of right technical framework, etc.


Improper scope definition is the major factor affecting costs in long term and hence, the more the clarity is achieved during scope definition, less is the probability of surprises later on.


Wrong choice of the Development Company
The skill set of those assigned to deliver the project team is another important decision which can affect the overall budget and completion time. Even within a company if wrong members are picked who lack required expertise, it will either take them longer to perform a particular module of the project or the project manager will spend its time monitoring the unmatched talent.

When shopping around for a web design company in India or else where, look for a company that has similar expertise and experience of your domain of interest. Do your research and spend time interviewing providers as a good service provider will ask the right questions, will take interest in understanding your business model, will bring his experience to provide consultation and will not agree to everything you ask.

Inexperience Project Manager

Inexperience of the project management lead mean, any aspect of project management can get a hit anytime thereby increasing ambiguity of the budget and time-lines. Project management is both science and art whereby, both people skills and technical skills are indispensable aspects of an effective management, which comes with experience of being in leadership roles of complex project development cycles. A good project manager plans each aspect of the project in advance, senses deviation from planned path, manages team conflicts, manages project scope and maintains seamless communication with the client ensuring they are in-line with the progress.


Poor Communication

Seamless communication is absolutely vital to the success of any project. The communication channels between the development team and the client, and also the intra organization communication must be clearly defined. Researches have proved that the inability of proper communication by any of the project agents (client, manager or developers) can lead to tasks not being carried out as expected and thereby results in time delays and budget overruns during correction phase.

Poor Risk Management

Risk management is also a part of project planning and often the most overlooked one. In project planning where there is no or poor emphasis to identify, assess, plan and implement risk procedures,the consequences could be damaging. Effective project risk management provides early warning signs on major risks, preempting risks, and increases the chances of controlling them thereby, meeting the targeted budget and time-line

Designing Express offers a full range of services for web development and iPhone app development in India. For such interesting posts and articles do visit The Official Blog of Designing Express.

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