If software development projects were racehorses, would informed business people bet on them, or buy them? Many projects fail, some scrape home and some succeed brilliantly. But there are reasons why some companies get what they need from software development, and why others are left with an empty stable and a heap of expensive hoopla on the floor.

The signs of a company not getting what it needs are many and varied in the software development world. The company may be forking out R500 000 a year to maintain 100 000 lines of legacy code. Users may complain that it takes longer and longer to make a change to a system developed just a few years ago and how expensive the change requests are. The ERP project that turned out to be badly customised may be hobbling along strapped by custom development.