10.5. Examples and Illustrations

In examining any new approach, it’s as important to discuss examples of failure as it is to highlight successes. Unfortunately, our failures are typically not well documented and rarely publicized. This makes a detailed review of failure patterns not possible. However, in general we have good understanding of why software fails [60]. Sometimes it’s due to single critical technical errors. But far more often it’s a combination of reasons that are buried in the complexity of enterprise software delivery.

In the following sections, I describe three vignettes¹¹ of software failure that highlight particular challenges in enterprise software delivery where outsourcing, supply chains, and software factory approaches have contributed to the failure. Drawing from available public information, I summarize the examples, and in each case, I make a number of observations.