At one time, my classmate was involved in a project that failed. It was not a commercial assignment. It was related to preparation for a school intellectual programming competition. The team at the school reached the finals of the competition, which had to provide a working application that should automate the learning process. A lesson schedule, a chat room for students, and a repository with learning materials had to be presented in this uncomplicated application.
The school team captain divided the tasks among the other students, and each person did a specific job for a week. Finally, the day before the finals started, it was time to put the app pieces together. The organizational parts were very disjointed, so the team could not combine the different codes into a single working project. There was so little time left that the school had to withdraw its application for the finals, and all the work it had done was ruined. The project got screwed up because the participants and the team captain could not establish a proper approach to the development process.
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) knowledge could have helped solve the problem. I think it was necessary to introduce Agile methodology into the process of creating the application (Half, 2021). The essence of this SDLC methodology is that developers are constantly testing their projects, quickly identifying small bugs before they become critical. Also, in Agile, the team meets daily so that different members find contact points and update others on their progress. You can also use a spiral methodology where the project goes through 4 phases (planning, risk analysis, design, and evaluation) (Trunkett, 2020). It allows to analyze the risks and constantly make improvements, improving the project.
References
Half, R. (2021). 6 basic SDLC methodologies: which one is best? Robert Half Talent Solutions. Web.
Trunkett O. (2020). SDLC methodologies: from waterfall to agile. Virtasant. Web.