1)      What are the 5 reasons a project fails?

They are:

1) Lack of communication - 40% of project managers cited poor communication as the leading cause of IT project failures.

2) Time wasted on small/purposeless activities-Developers on average spend 15 minutes a day finding files.

3) Priority or severity not assigned to tasks - This results in team members working on low priority tasks instead of high priority tasks.

4) Poor requirements - Requirements are the items that your application or project need to include in order to meet your business goals. Poor requirement management can lead to all sorts of delays and added costs.

5) Poor time management-In a recent poll, 75% of IT executives blame their project failure on missed deadlines. When people stop by your office for “got a minute” meetings, they typically carve at least 15 minutes out of your day. If you have eight “got a minute” meetings per day, that’s a total of 2 hours you’re spending – roughly 25% of your day!

2)      How large of a team is needed to justify using an issue tracker?

There is no set limit on how large of a team or how many issues is needed to justify using an issue tracker.  It really depends on whether your current issue tracking process is working for you. If you can keep track of your issues, and have one team member, than perhaps you don’t need one. However, if you find yourself sorting through your inbox or wasting time trying to keep track of issues, it is safe to say that you can benefit from an issue tracker. As a rule thumb, you should consider using Issue Tracking software when you have two people or more on your team. A good issue tracking software can save you on average a $1000/month for each person on your team. That's a savings of $12,000/year per person. Now you can do the math yourself. How much do you save if you have 3 people on your team? 20? 100? As you can see, an Issue Tracker is well worth the investment.

3)      Why shouldn’t we develop our own in house Issue Tracking tool?

Seldom will you end up with an in house tool that is as full-featured as an already established product. External issue tracking systems benefit from being refined, debugged and optimized from the feedback of thousands of users.  The user experience is much better, which allows you to solve the issues faster.

Developing an in house Issue Tracking tool is also much more expensive than purchasing one. Don't you prefer that your highly paid team spend their valuable time developing the company's products rather than an Issue Tracking application? It is much more effective to have them focus on their job and have someone else take care of the Issue Tracking tool for a fraction of the cost.

4)      What are the benefits of using an online hosted application?

I am going to explain the benefits of using an online hosted application, and why it is more cost effective than traditional software.

Online hosted applications are software applications where the software resides on servers that are accessed through the internet, instead of the more traditional software that is installed on either local servers or on individual PC's.  Using an online hosted application can significantly reduce costs.  For one, you don’t need to purchase local servers.  A server can cost you anywhere from $4,000 -$10,000 depending on the size. Two, it is unnecessary to perform backup’s and restores which can cost up to $10,000/year. Three, you will need a technician to set up your servers and migrate all of the information to the server-this can easily cost thousands! With an online hosted application, there is no expensive capital hardware or software costs, no installation cost, and anyone can collaborate world-wide in seconds.

5)    What are the 4 principles to complete a project on time?

1.     Prioritize all of the variables - do a wide scale prioritization of all of the tasks. Managing the priority early will stop a “crash” later. This way your team members focus on the high priority tasks before the low priority ones.

2.     Weekly workshops can work miracles.  That’s when you put something on the white board that needs focus and work on it with the team.

3.     Continual monitoring and measurement of time, milestones, people, and equipment schedules to help you identify bottlenecks and track the progress of the project based on the plan.

4.     Use simple, web based management tools to help manage team members, tasks, information, and improve communication.

 www.elementool.com/blog