Integration issues
Compatibility problems can derail a software project. If the final system doesn’t pair successfully with existing tools that your users rely on, then your overall project could be less useful or you might find yourself backtracking significantly.
Make sure integration issues don’t get in your way by using an API (application programming interface) or connecting with other technologies and forming strategic partnerships.
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Leverage APIs: With APIs that streamline the interaction between your system and your users’ other applications, you can maintain your engineering team’s focus on other issues such as the user interface and the app’s functionality.
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Form technology partnerships: Work directly with the developers of other software your users rely on to create integrated software packages that benefit both companies and end-users.
Lack of communication
Project leaders, developers, and designers can all have a different understanding of a project’s requirements. This can greatly complicate the development process and lead to confusion and misunderstandings that may derail the project or delay key milestones. For example, if the team doesn’t completely understand the vision presented by the project champion, implementation of that vision might result in a finished product that doesn’t meet the brief.
To prevent a lack of communication from destroying the project, you should develop a communications plan and set expectations early on.
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Avoid assumptions: Communication errors are often caused by unfounded assumptions. The best way to reduce assumptions is by continuing to ask questions.
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Bring in users: Your users and core stakeholders should be able to provide feedback and help guide the project’s vision and implementation.
Misjudging overall costs
An inaccurate cost estimate at the beginning of the project can lead directly to wasted or misallocated resources. In the end, your project can be over-budget, costing much more than your project leadership planned for. At best, your project is a bit more expensive but is otherwise successful. If your project becomes far too expensive to be practical, however, your organization may need to cancel it or look for features to cut—definitely not a positive outcome.
You can reduce your risk of misjudging overall costs by doing everything you can to determine costs upfront and check in on the numbers during the project as you achieve milestones to see how your spending is matching up with budgets for each area of the project.
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Be flexible: Know when to be flexible with your budget. A good project plan should assume some budget flexibility, ideally accounting for potential cost increases or changes.
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Find price ranges: Identify potentially expensive areas of your project early along with a range that includes worst-case scenarios.
Failure to define a target audience
Users and key stakeholders are important throughout the design and development process, but some software projects fail to appropriately define their audiences. Bringing in frequent user input to every part of the development process is part of what sets Agile projects apart. Without a defined target audience, you can wind up creating software for no one in particular or for everyone.
Asking lots of questions, doing what you can to find real users, and involving other parts of your organization can help with this.
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Talk with users: Have your team sit down with real-life users and learn from their needs, interests, and expectations. This practice can be invaluable to understanding user experience. Using surveys, focus groups, and meetups along with interviews and invitation-only beta testing will provide your team with essential data and anecdotes to shape the target audience further and direct the course of your designs and development.
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Create a user journey map: Examine your user journey research and plan how your software users will interact with your finished product. A diagram can help you visualize the steps involved from a user perspective.
