SOFTWARE FAILURE STATISTICS - RequirementEngineering/helloworld-Itzelrosales GitHub Wiki

The history of project management is somewhat similar to that of the production of matches. Initially, scientists had gotten it all wrong: matches were toxic, explosive, and huge in size. It wasn’t until two Swedes, Gustav Erik Pasch and Johan Edvard Lundström, came up with the red phosphorus prototype that matches became the safe commodity that we use today.

Software projects seem to follow the analogy, if distantly. Some 50 years since the inception of project management, more than 50% of IT projects still fail because they run out of time, resources, funds, etc. Will there come a day when we’ll be able to plan and execute projects successfully? We’ll live and see.

TOP SOFTWARE FAILURES IN HISTORY

BRITISH AIRWAYS For the sixth time in a year, British Airways faced a massive global IT failure which led to the airline cancelling all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick in May 2017.

The IT failure affected over 1,000 flights, British Airways call centres, the website and mobile app. According to the GMB Union, the failure could have been avoided if the airline had not made hundreds of its IT staff redundant in 2016.

NISSAN'S AIRBAG GLITCH Over the past two years Nissan has been recalling airbags adding up to over 1 million cars. The software failure was due to a glitch in the airbag's sensory detectors.

In short, the affected cars could not detect whether an adult was sat in the car's passenger seat and as a result the airbags would not inflate. There has been a reported two accidents due to this software failure.

STARBUCK'S SOFTWARE BUG Back in April 2015, Starbucks witnessed a register malfunction which according to Starbucks, was caused by an 'internal failure' during its routine refresh. This resulted in 60 percent of stores in the US and Canada being forced to close. The affected stores were unable to process payment transactions and at one point many stores were giving the coffee away for free.

LINKS USED

https://www.objectstyle.com/agile/software-projects-failure-statistics-and-reasons https://www.computerworlduk.com/galleries/infrastructure/top-software-failures-recent-history-3599618/