Why 8 Out of 10 IT Projects Fail
You haven’t hired a developer yet, and your project may already be doomed. According to McKinsey’s analysis of 1,500 large IT projects, 45% fail or significantly miss their goals — companies either cancel the project or fall far short of what they intended to achieve. And this is not about a weak development team. It is about decisions made — or not made — long before the first line of code.
I’m Nataliia Dnes, founder of DNES IT Solutions. We build our own products (Attesta Service, ClientFlow CRM, PhotoFlow CRM) and custom solutions for businesses across industries. And every time a client comes to us saying “we need an app,” I already know the first meeting won’t be about technology. It will be about the business.
The Main Reason Projects Fail: Not Technology, But an Unclear Goal
According to a 2023 Project Management Institute (PMI) survey, poor requirements management is the cause of 42% of all project failures. This is the single most common reason.
Phrases like “we need a CRM” or “we want a mobile app” are wishes, not a plan. They say nothing about the result you actually expect.
Before you start development, answer these questions clearly:
- What exactly should get shorter or better — order processing time, number of phone calls, number of manual steps?
- Who on your team is responsible for making decisions on this project?
- What result, three months after launch, would count as success?
If you don’t have clear answers, no development team — even the best one — can guess what to build.
Business Analysis Is Not Bureaucracy. It’s Budget Insurance
The second common mistake: a company jumps straight to picking a technology and a development team, skipping business analysis completely.
Before development starts, you need to describe:
- your current business processes;
- the roles and permissions of different system users;
- data sources and required integrations (for example, with accounting or a POS system);
- real use cases — what a person actually does in the system every day.
This takes a few days at the start of a project. But skipping this step explains why, according to Harvard Business Review, one in six IT projects has an average cost overrun of 200% and a schedule overrun of 70%. Not because development itself got more expensive. Because halfway through the project, everyone realizes the team built the wrong thing.
A Real Example: When an App Fixes Kitchen-to-Floor Communication
One of our clients is a restaurant where order updates were passed between the kitchen and the floor by hand: waiters ran back and forth to check order status, and the kitchen couldn’t always report delays or readiness in time.
We built a custom mini-app that syncs order status between the kitchen and the floor in real time — no phone calls, no running around, no “nobody told me.” Result: the restaurant team got clear, real-time control over every order, and waiters stopped wasting time chasing order status instead of serving guests.
That’s the whole point of this approach: not “use technology for the sake of technology,” but solve a real operational problem the business owner deals with every day.
(Nataliia, if you have the exact numbers for this case — for example, how many minutes order handoff took before and after — send them and I’ll add the precise figures right away.)
Why You Shouldn’t Try to Build Everything at Once
Another common trap: trying to build every feature in the first version of the product.
This increases:
- the time to first release;
- development cost;
- the risk that some features turn out to be unnecessary.
It’s far more effective to start with an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) — a small working version that solves the main problem. Then you test it in real use and expand functionality based on actual user behavior, not guesses.
What This Means for Your Business
If you’re planning to order a web platform, CRM, or mobile app, it pays to go through a short preparation phase — on your own or with a consultant — before you look for a development partner. This isn’t extra work. It directly affects your budget, your timeline, and the final result.
According to 2023 PMI estimates, project failures cost businesses around the world about $2.5 trillion every year. That’s not an abstract number — it’s real company budgets that could have been spent far more effectively.
Practical Checklist Before You Start an IT Project
- Write a specific business goal (not “we need a system,” but “cut request processing time from 2 days to 2 hours”).
- Describe your current processes — how things work today, before the new system.
- Identify the key users of the system and their daily tasks.
- Agree on MVP scope — what’s in the first version, and what waits.
- Set 2-3 measurable success metrics.
- Assign one person on your side who is responsible for project decisions.
Common Reasons IT Projects Fail — In Short
- Unclear business requirements.
- No responsible decision-maker on the client side.
- Constant, uncontrolled changes to scope (scope creep).
- Insufficient testing before launch.
- No plan for rollout and user training.
- Focus on technology instead of business results.
A successful IT project doesn’t start with choosing a programming language or a framework. It starts with a clear understanding of the business problem you’re solving. A few days invested in business analysis and planning almost always pays off — in lower risk, lower cost, and faster delivery.
Technology is just a tool. The business result is the goal.
Planning Your Project?
If you’re thinking about your own web app, mobile app, or CRM system, start with a Discovery phase and business analysis together with DNES IT Solutions. Email us at general@dnesitsolutions.com or leave a comment — we’ll walk you through how it works for a business like yours.