Page 122 - Navy Journal 219

SOFTWARE PROJECT RUNWAY IN BANGLADESH NAVY :
MEASURES TO MITIGATE PITFALLS OF SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE

Commander A K M Bodrul Qadir, (L), psc, BN

“Operation keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end of the tunnel,
but project management is the train engine that moves the organization forward.”
Joy Gumz
Introduction

In 2005, the software named ‘Virtual Case File (VCF)’ of United States
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was abandoned after five years of
development causing $170 million loss. It was reported by Washington Post in
2006 that the said software was incomplete, inadequate and so poorly designed
that it would be essentially unusable under real-world conditions. This is one of
the several cases of ‘project runway’ which caused loss in terms of money and
time for organizations around the globe since 1980s. Software project runway
has become a well discussed topic in the field of software engineering over the
past four decades due to many incidences like the VCF. Software project runway
or project failure is defined as any project that is set to support the operations of
an organization by exploiting the resources of information technology that fails
to deliver the intended output within the originally allocated cost and time
schedule.

Bangladesh Navy (BN) being most technology oriented force of
Bangladesh stepped into the era of information technology during early 90’s.
However, customized software development projects began during early 2000’s
in order to automate operational and administrative activities. Almost, thirty
software has already been developed in BN and several are in the pipeline.
However, few of them already became unutilized and few are facing the
phenomenon of ‘project runway’ or ‘project failure’! Though, the corresponding
loss in terms of money is not that much but there is high possibility that we are
going to face difficulty with the software junks to be created in near future.
Moreover, unused software and codes inside them are the vulnerabilities for the
security of information as they might initiate other backdoor programs.

114