No schedule, No UML, no etc.., but still a project be successful? [closed]

Question

The findings came from NICTA’s study of 400 projects shows

1. Most projects that had no schedule were successful
2. The choice of requirements methodology does not matter; UML was "no help".
3. In the U.S. (but not elsewhere), developers are involved in project estimation only when there are poor requirements.

and the surprises goes on.

What I am eager to know is,

1. How is it so?
2. If it is true, then why you need schedules, UML, ..etc.

Answer 1

Defining success is subjective.

Schedules or UML diagrams are just by-products of software development. They are not the software itself. If the resulting software satisfies customer needs, it really does not matter what by-products were required to get there.

"Process" is there to act as an armor. It will protect you from some things but at the same time it makes you more cumbersome. You need to balance between predictability and flexibility.

It is people not process that gets software done.

Answer 2

No big shock sadly, call me Ayn Rand but I've long held the view that 1% of the world is driving the other 99% forward.

How is it so? Well, all I see when I read the article is: people are terrible at managing anything but it all works out in the end because it has to. It's really just documented evidence that people are very bad at assessing risk and the best project management is that which accepts and prepares for failures. Any other view is delusional.

If one chooses to define success as getting the project out of the door (and that's not even the worst definition I've heard) then it's very easy for management to claim (or believe) that all is well in the world. The economic pressure after all is just to get the money in the bank, only the very small and very large companies have any invested interest in actually making things work [better].

Why do you need schedules etc? Well so you can combat the risks and make for an efficient company. YOu can get by without any of this (there's no justice in the world) but you increase the risk of massive failure, and in the long run that's going to kill you.

33% of projects said they had no risks, but 62% of those failed

Says everything really. Humans, eh?