Business information systems can be either designed as custom applications or purchased as off-the-shelf standard solutions. The development of custom applications is generally expensive and is often plagued by uncertainties, such as the selection of appropriate development tools, the duration of the development cycle, or the difficulties involved in assessing costs. Thus, empirical surveys have shown that between half to two-thirds of information systems projects fail. The current tendency to shift from individual development to standardized, prepackaged software solutions is therefore not surprising.

Success in all types of organization depends increasingly on the development of customized software solutions, yet more than half of software projects now in the works will exceed both their schedules and their budgets by more than 50%.

Sadly, we must report that despite the success stories described in previous chapters, many companies that begin reengineering don’t succeed at it... Our unscientific estimate is that as many as 50 to 70 percent of the organizations that undertake a reengineering effort do not achieve the dramatic results they intended.

Like many fields in their early stages, the software field has had its share of project disasters: the software equivalents of Beauvais Cathedral, the S.S. Titanic, and the "Galloping Gertie" Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The frequency of these disaster projects is a serious concern: a recent survey of 600 firms indicated that 35% of them had at least one "runaway' software project.

How many wisely conceived projects have failed and will fail in the future! How many insane projects have succeeded and will succeed!

If a book about failures doesn't sell, is it a success?

The it-ish understand: failure is a part of success.

…well over half of the time you spend working on a project (on the order of 70 percent) is spent thinking, and no tool, no matter how advanced, can think for you. Consequently, even if a tool did everything except the thinking for you – if it wrote 100 percent of the code, wrote 100 percent of the documentation, did 100 percent of the testing, burned the CD-ROMs, put them in boxes, and mailed them to your customers – the best you could hope for would be a 30 percent improvement in productivity. In order to do better than that, you have to change the way you think.

The insights in the book come from a series of research projects exploring enterprise architecture in more than 200 companies where our focus was on IT government from 1995 to 2005.

90 percent of all problems can be solved by using the techniques of data stratification, histograms, and control charts. Among the causes of nonconformance, only one-fifth or less are attributable to the workers.

Compile a list of failures and disappointments. This should include new initiatives and offerings by your enterprise that have failed outright or fell far below expectations.

Managers of companies, big and small, all want to do well, so they make decisions, hire consultants and implement systems to help them achieve that desired outcome. But all too often, it is not the systems that fail but the ability to maintain them.

Most Business Processes Are 90% Waste and 10% Value-Added Work

It-owners know that setbacks can be setups for better things to come. They study their failures and learn from them.