Therefore as most projects involve a number of responsible parties including the client, success form a contractual and project management perspective, rests in the ability to clearly separate roles and responsibilities and manage these on an ongoing basis throughout the project life time.

A vendor or contractor is often dependent on the client for its own deliveries, and its failure to deliver can often be pointed right back at the client.

It is unlikely that corporates can hire and maintain the skills required for excellent software development and documentation and access to source code do not manage risk in any significant way.

Implementation of systems from most of the large IT hardware and software systems will enjoy support and access to best practice experiences. This just means smart buying and sufficient budget.

The risk inherent in software development can be partly mitigated by choosing the optimal process. Think waterfall vs agile approaches. However the only real way of avoiding the disaster is hiring the smarts and experience of veteran, professional software developers (not just analysts and managers). In my (humble) experience these are in vast short supply.