Try to recall the last talk you had with some friends in the bar or colleagues over lunch? What was it about?

In the case of a group of women I don’t know it. If related to cars I guess you mentioned the nice but, the great look & feel, the rounded shapes, beautiful striping, nice and special color, the safety and the great seat covers.

If not about women or money you and your male friends talked about cars. Especially about horse power, engine size, fuel type, fuel consumption, acceleration, maximum speed, tire size and more technical and impressive specs.

Do you ever have such talks about the software you have just bought?

You can often read about software development projects that failed. The presented figures vary from about 35% up to 75% of the total amount of projects. There is no need to argue these figures. Let’s better try to fight the causes. So, first we need to find the biggest traps in software development.

[Picture credits: Stock.xchng]

A picture is worth a thousand words and still we express ourselves mainly in words, just like this blog post. Although many people will support the statement, we just think it is harder to express our thoughts with pictures. People claim that they are not artists. Anyhow, I guarantee that explaining your client what you want to develop with pictures leads to a much better end result. That’s why real estate developers use artistic impressions, it just sells better when people understand what they will buy. Software developers too often try to capture everything in functional and technical descriptions, but for a client it is hard to decide whether this will satisfy his needs. Unpleasant surprises might occur at the end of the project. Show a picture with your thoughts and the give rise to discussion.

Computerworld UK published an article in April saying: “Outsourcing Not the Big Savings Firms Expect, Study Says”. Summarizing, the recession is pushing businesses to cut the cost of their software portfolios, but most companies overestimate the savings that offshoring can deliver, as presented by CIO.com. On the other hand I firmly believe it is possible to save costs if you follow the proper approach.