Business leaders frustrated by time and cost of new in-house software development

In a survey of 474 US business decision-makers within companies with at least 1,000 employees, just 39% said their company's IT teams have "the ability to regularly deliver projects on time and on budget".

Just 43% of respondents said that their IT team "collaborates with the business on business strategy and innovation" and only 40% said that their team "provides efficient and effective support for back-office applications and processes".

The biggest software technology or organisation priority for internal IT teams within the next year is to "support business requirements and corporate growth", according to the business decision-makers surveyed by Forrester Research (6-page / 140KB PDF). Forrester conducted the survey on behalf of software development and business process company EffectiveUI.

According to a separate survey of 50 IT decision-makers, the biggest obstacle IT teams face in developing and enhancing in-house developed software applications is "ever-changing business and user requirements".

Those IT decision-makers also revealed better levels of satisfaction in relation to how in-house developed customer-facing web applications perform compared to customer-facing mobile software applications. Fewer than half (46%) of the respondents said they were either very satisfied or satisfied with in-house developed customer-facing mobile apps.

"Ultimately, application development teams are judged not by how well they gather business requirements, choose development technologies, manage the project, or march through the development process — they are judged by: how well their software serves the business goals, and by how people — customers or employees — feel before, during, and after they use their software," the survey report said.