Mistake #1 - Not involving the business users

The project was pretty much run by the technical manager and an engineer from the client side. From time to time, an architect would be brought in to check the direction. To be fair to the architect, he did a reasonably good design of the original system about two years ago. The spec document was fairly clear.

The missing piece in whole story was - the business stakeholders were nowhere to be seen. Almost six months after the project was signed off by the technical folks, the business users realized that the existing system can't be replaced by the new piece of software. They took it up with the head of technology, who brings in the CxOs into picture. From the vendor organization, what appeared to be a closed project that entered the maintenance mode now looks like a failed project.

For a consulting organization, it is important that business stake holders are involved possibly in every phase of the project.

• Know who the business users are.
• If the requirements were done by a client side stakeholder, ensure that it was discussed with the business users and signed off.
• Get access to the existing system to understand how it works and what more needs to be built.
• Determine the data migration that's needed and review it for every feature addition.