Software Projects Crest and Trough in Pakistan: A Management Spectrum

Abstract

Software industry has become as popular factor in the progress triumph of every country. Software project management techniques are significantly applicable in the development cycle of software projects. Despite that software projects face many tarnished reputations of poor performance in terms of schedule, budget, quality, and many other management and controlling correlated factors. Influencing factors which makes the software project successful are under the prominence of extensive research for more than the 40 years. Still, most of the relevant research in this territory has focused on developing countries with little consideration of less advanced countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the success and failure factors in the Pakistani software environment using Qualitative research analysis approach. For this purpose, almost thirty software houses were targeted from four provinces of Pakistan and collected perception-based data through questionnaires and interviews from related personals. We further elaborate and compare some critical factors from past literatures in this research. Finally, the outcomes and findings showed better management and development aspects for a healthy software project growth in the domain of Pakistan. The importance of this research is to cover both theoretical and practical dimensions of software project management. We have found that proper scheduling, appropriate estimation of cost and time, Agile methodology, RMMM (risk mitigation, monitoring, management) approach, team bonding, team or staff motivational and communication factors significantly affected on successful projects.