Nanny Sulasailor: I don’t find the delays in the business process or in technological development is at all surprising, it’s what happens in development projects of this complexity which I have experienced in the British Military.
Robert, I can nothing but support the above and everything else you wrote in your excellent post! Making exact estimates about durations and completion dates is generally impossible, except for simple projects. "Simple" means: You have accomplished a certain task
- a couple of times already
- with the same team.
Nothing of this applies to the the POET Monetization Project, so please expect uncertainties, changes, impediments, delays etc. This is normal and part of the risk.
I am an IT professional and as such have some numbers regarding software projects for you. Okay, software projects are no semiconductor projects, but I would assume that the numbers might be somewhat similar, at least in their orders of magnitude.
- 35 % of software development efforts are changes.
- 50 % of all software projects fail to meet at least one of time, budget or quality.
- 20 – 30 % of all software projects fail completely.
This should not scare you, but rather give you an impression of the challenges projects are usually facing. We have learned already that POET changes milestones according to customers' change requests, and we experienced failures to meet timelines several times. Nothing of this is uncommon or unexpected. Sure, POET's intransparency doesn't make life easier for shareholders, but it is for a good reason and will quite likely pay out. I can sleep well, won't sell a share, and am looking forward to The Big News.
