For decades, research organizations have been compiling and reporting statistics and other information attempting to identify and eliminate the reasons why systems development projects fail. In many of these reports a list of "causes" is usually produced. A partial list of causes is provided below.
These reports often suggest solutions to eliminate or reduce these causes. However, large numbers of systems development projects continue to fail. These and other causes keep appearing in the statistics year after year.
Another issue with systems is inadequate security controls and countermeasures. This is evidenced by the growing number of data breaches showing up in news stories regularly. We don't have to list them here. A simple search on a search engine will result in a plethora of news articles about data breaches going back many years.
It is our belief from research and experience that the overall cause of these "causes" and a growing number of data breaches is inadequate systems development methodologies. Development methodologies have been around for decades. Even though project managers and development leaders have followed these methodologies to the letter, projects keep failing and data breaches keep occuring for the same reasons. This points to the inadequacy of these methodologies. If the methodology were sound and thorough, we would not see these issues happening for the same reasons over and over.
A solid development methodology would allow project leaders to deal with these inefficiencies and other issues, and would prevent constant reoccurrence of project failures and data breaches. Below is a partial list of problems with past methodologies. These problems negatively affect the deliverability of projects, often robbing project teams of both productivity and agility.