Below is a list of most common customized computer application development problem areas.

•	Lack of end users needs and wants research, poor implementation of the information collected during such research, or poorly selected end user representative or representative group.
•	Lack of such collaboration with the end users during the programming and application development stage or the testing stage that produces actual end user (or end user representative) feedback on newly developed application parts, or poor implementation of the feedback collected.
•	Poorly devised and/or implemented project development plan, lack of clear objectives and non-existent or ineffective ROI analysis.
•	Lack of management commitment - this includes user group management commitment, and departmental and company management commitment of people's time and other resources, including financial resources.
•	Lack of understanding of the resources needed. If the objective is to establish a realistic timeframe and budget for the project, then the analysis and planning stage must be sufficiently thorough. During this stage the application's future users needs and wants are investigated and, based on the results, project plan is put together. The resources needed (including time, that is, the length of the project) should be estimated only after the detailed plan has been put together. If the analysis performed and the development plans for the different parts of the project are sufficiently thorough, the resources needed can be estimated relatively accurately. It is usually unrealistic to expect that everything is foreseen, and it may be inefficient to do initial analysis that considers every single detail. However, without sufficiently thorough analysis the initially roughly estimated need for resources can easily double, triple, or more, as additional parts of the project are discovered during the development process. If the project's length or budget increase by more than 20% from the initial estimate, the initial analysis probably was not done well enough. On the other hand, if the analysis is done well enough and the estimate contains sufficient resource reserve as a buffer for the unexpected and that resource reserve can be allocated on as needed bases, as an interval, the estimate can be very accurate.

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