Why 90% of technology projects fail and no one talks about it!

The shift in habits, with more and more people using online services, has increased the demand for digital solutions. This has pressured companies to embrace digital transformation and innovation to adapt to the new market reality and serve these customers.

In the digital market, an emerging startup competes with traditional companies. In this scenario, native digital companies have successfully seized the moment, building modern platforms that deliver more value to customers at lower operational costs.

The race for digitalization has become frantic. How many times have you heard someone talk about a revolutionary project, like the “next Uber, Airbnb, Netflix, or Nubank”? However, the challenges of software development soon became evident, including the need for qualified and specialized labor.

Reality has shown that building a digital platform is much more than adding a button or creating an attractive layout. Many engineering decisions impact the future of the business, whether it’s the ability to continue evolving, respond quickly to changes with quality and agility, or achieve operational efficiency.

The truth is that technology projects remain extremely challenging. The idea of hiring a large team without a well-defined strategy works only in the theory of a financial spreadsheet in Excel. In practice, many projects that should be agile and efficient end up being expensive to maintain, evolve, and operate. This often occurs due to inadequate implementations or launching an MVP labeled as SaaS without proper preparation, which then fails to sustain itself or consumes more computational resources than necessary.

In the past five years, it has become clear that using the most modern tools is not enough if you ignore the essence of building a solid software foundation. It is essential to make the right decisions and ensure continuous and sustainable development.

Investing in qualified people is crucial, but merely having a talented team does not solve the problem if the software strategy is neglected, allowing each member to follow their own direction, focusing more on testing something new rather than adding real value to the business.

After navigating various complex software projects over the past five years, it becomes evident that this “DNA” of recurring problems has now become challenging to manage. If you’ve worked on similar projects, you’ve likely observed the negative impact of a poorly planned flow in practice.

The truth is that this pain only reveals itself when chaos hits production: people become exhausted, customers stop using the product, and the company that invested in an innovative solution to position itself in the market now faces the dilemma of having to redo everything or pretend normalcy and accept its irrelevance in the digital market.

Conclusion:

• Challenges in hiring and training specialized labor: One of the first obstacles companies face is the lack of appropriate professionals to handle the complexity of technology projects.
• Engineering decisions impact the future of the business: The success of a platform depends on making the right technical decisions, ensuring the ability to evolve and respond to market changes quickly.
• Hiring without a well-defined strategy: A large team without clear direction leads to wasted resources and poorly executed projects.
• Inadequate implementations and poorly prepared MVPs: Launching an MVP or SaaS without proper preparation results in high costs and maintenance difficulties.
• Neglecting the software strategy: Even with a talented team and the most modern tools, the lack of a solid strategy leads to inevitable failure.

These factors reveal the real challenges behind technology projects. They are not only technical but also structural and strategic.

So what now? Is your company prepared to avoid these pitfalls, or will it fall into the same traps as so many others? It’s time to reflect on your decisions and the future of your project. Success is in every detail—start taking action now to build a solid foundation before it’s too late.

Do you need specialized software strategy consultancy to support the modernization of your software? Get in touch.

See you !!!

Ramon Durães
VP Engineering @ Driven Software Strategy Advisor