Information Systems Project Manager’s Critical Success Factors: In-house Versus Outsourced Development

Abstract

Software quality is measured in many ways; in this paper we look at Client Acceptance.In order to aid the process of managing and achieving client acceptance, a pilot study has been undertaken to identify the project manager’s critical success factors (CSF) for achieving client acceptance. With the increase in outsourcing it is also of interest to determine whether the critical success factors might be different for software developed in-house when compared with that developed by a third party. A previous study (Rehesaar and Rose [1]) found differences in client acceptance criteria between in-house and outsourced projects and these criteria are used here.This study found that for similar client acceptance criteria there are no differences between in-house and outsourced project manager’s critical success factors. However, significant differences were found in the specified critical success factors for different client acceptance criteria. Most notably, eleven of the eighteen critical success factors were applicable to only one client acceptance criterion each.Therefore, project managers who are changing from in-house to outsourced development or vice versa must be aware that they should apply a different set of critical success factors based on the different set of client acceptance criteria they must satisfy.