Software Development Project Performance Research Articles

ENHANCED PERFORMANCE ON SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT THROUGH PROJECT PLANNING, TECHNICAL FACTORS, TEAM CAPABILITY, AND PROJECT SCOPE (CASE STUDY: IT AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT DIVISION AT PT. X)

The research was conducted in a company who engaged in the Fintech field which is inseparable from project management activities. On its implementation there is a project completion time that exceed the specified schedule due to the limited number of human resources and also those bugs in the application generated in the project being run. This research has purposes to revealed the amount of impact from project planning to technical factors, team capabilities and project scopes also to find out the amount of impact which caused by technical factors, team capabilities and project scopes towards the performance of software development project. These research data were obtained through questionnaires that involving 63 respondents. The data analysis technique used PLS-SEM. The results from this research found that project planning had a positive and significant affect on technical factors by 60.1%, team capability by 45.5% while project scope by 57.3%. Technical factors, team capability and project scope had a positive and significant affect towards the performance of software development projects with each amount of influence, namely 39.3%, 25.6% and 31%, respectively.

Evaluation of software development projects based on integrated Pythagorean fuzzy methodology

Implementing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system successfully comes with a set of costly and complex challenges. The purpose of this paper is to offer an effective cloud-based ERP software evaluation framework to gain a better understanding of these complexities and address such challenges by identifying the selection criteria. The PFS (Pythagorean Fuzzy Set) is the new extension of Intuitionistic fuzzy sets, the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) is an easy-to-use technique to determine the weights of the criteria, and the VIKOR technique is a compromise ranking methodology. In the recommended novel integrated MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision-Making) methodology, Decision-Makers (DMs) must choose the best one among a set of candidate alternatives that satisfies the evaluation criteria. The GDM (Group Decision Making) is preferred here to deal with hesitancy in the evaluation of alternatives under group preferences. The sensitivity analysis resulted from various scenarios reveals that the proposed method is quite sensitive to criteria weights. The service and support, cost, and functionality are found as the essential evaluation criteria for the Turkish firm. These findings emphasize the significance of a qualified group of DMs for the evaluation process. The case study findings demonstrate that the developed approach is practical and validated for solving software development projects. This study presents a novel integrated methodology based on the PFS, SAW, and VIKOR to measure the performance of software development projects, to deal with the ambiguity and imprecision caused by the subjective judgments of DMs. The research contributes to the literature by delivering a combined decision methodology for the first time and by applying it to evaluate the software development projects.

Enhancing software development through project‐based learning and the quality of planning

R&D plays a crucial role in developing new products, the commercialisation of which can drive corporate growth. Over three decades, research has focused the new product development (NPD) process and it is known that developing new products is a knowledge‐intensive, risky activity. Since industry surveys show that many NPD projects, particularly software‐based ones, fail to meet their schedules and objectives. Consequently, today’s R&D managers still need ways to plan and conduct NPD more effectively. Project‐based Learning (PBL) – the generation of specific technical and process knowledge during and after a project – is a potential way to improve NPD. Therefore, this paper investigated the research question: Does PBL enhance the quality of planning in subsequent software development projects? The study used a sample of 47 software development projects at three multinational organisations. Significantly, the findings show that PBL does enhance the quality of planning of subsequent software development projects. In particular, the quality of planning is increased in projects with high levels of uncertainty; where team members work in a project‐based structure with strong collaboration; and when the pressure to deliver projects is high. The contribution of the research at a theoretical level is that it identified an important link between learning and the quality of planning in subsequent NPD projects. At a practical level, the study identifies specific steps R&D managers can take to improve the performance of software development projects, with all their associated challenges.

Project governance mechanisms and the performance of software development projects: Moderating role of requirements risk

Over the years, practitioners and academicians have been perplexed by low efficiency and poor performance in IT projects. Previous studies have uncovered a variety of critical factors, including effective project governance mechanisms that can trigger project performance and curb opportunism. However, an obvious question that emerges is how effective these governance mechanisms are at improving the performance of an IT organization and software development project in the presence of risk factors. Hence, the overarching objective of the current study is the development of a moderation model to investigate the effectiveness of these governance mechanisms in the presence of requirements risk. This paper follows a positivist research philosophy where a quantitative deductive approach has been used to collect the data of 318 respondents from 175 software development firms based in Pakistan. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) through SmartPLS 3 have been used to analyze the hypotheses. The results of the study indicate that contractual and relational governances significantly influence project performance and are useful in reducing opportunism. Moreover, there is evidence that the presence of requirements risk tends to negatively moderate the influence of contractual and relational governances on project performance. The findings will help not only Pakistan's software firms, but also those in developing countries that want to improve performance through effective project governance and risk management.

Study on Influencing Factors of Multiple SCRUM Software Development Project Performance Based on Team Difference

From the perspective of team difference, combined with multiple SCRUM software development project features, studied the impacts of team communication, team trust, team innovation, team reaction speed and team conflict on the performance of multiple SCRUM software development project. The data was collected by means of electronic questionnaire, then performed multiple regression analysis. Results show that team communication and team reaction speed have significant influence on the performance of multiple SCRUM project. Team trust, team innovation and team conflict have no obvious effect on team performance.

Using the Fuzzy Linguistic Preference Relation Approach for Assessing the Importance of Risk Factors in a Software Development Project

This study employs fuzzy linguistic preference relation (Fuzzy LinPreRa) approach to assess the relative degree of impact of risk factors in software development project for two expert groups working in technology enterprises and software development companies. For the identified risk dimensions, the results show the same rankings for these two groups. “Organization function risk” is considered the most important dimension influencing the software development project performance, with the others, in order, being “developing technology risk,” “resources integration risk,” “personnel system risk” and “system requirement risk.” The proposed approach not only facilitates the information collecting for making pairwise comparisons, but it also eliminates the inconsistencies in the collected information.

Risk Factors Assessment for Software DevelopmentProject Based on Fuzzy Decision Making

This study investigates and identifies the assessment factors in software development project risk through literature reviews. Based on the identified assessment factors, a hierarchical structure of five dimensions and twenty-two factors is constructed, and two systematic approaches, fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (FMCDM) and consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR), were employed to assess the absolute and relative importance rates and then determine priorities of these factors. Among the identified dimensions, Organization Function Risk was considered as the most important dimension to influence the software development project performance.

Evaluating the performance of open source software projects using data envelopment analysis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the relative performance of open source software (OSS) projects.Design/methodology/approachThis paper evaluates the relative performance of OSS projects by evaluating multiple project inputs and multiple project outputs by using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. The DEA model produces an efficiency score for each project based on project inputs and outputs. The method of producing an efficiency score is based on the convex envelopment technology structure. The efficiency measure quantifies a “distance” to an efficient frontier.FindingsThe DEA model produced an index of corresponding intensities linking an inefficient project to its benchmark efficient project(s). The inefficiency measures produced an ordering of inefficient projects. Eight projects were found to be “efficient” and used as benchmarking projects.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited to only security‐based OSS projects. Future research on other areas of OSS projects is warranted.Practical implicationsThe result of this research is a practical model that can be used by OSS project developers to evaluate the relative performance of their projects and make resource decisions.Originality/valueThis research extends the work of previous studies that have examined the relative performance of software development projects in a traditional development environment. As a result of this research, OSS projects can now be adequately benchmarked and evaluated according to project performance. An OSS project manger can effectively use these results to critically evaluate resources for their project and judge the relative efficiency of the resources.

Evaluation of software development projects using a fuzzy multi-criteria decision approach

Software development is an inherently uncertain activity. To deal with the uncertainty and vagueness from humans’ subjective perception and experience in decision process, this paper presents an evaluation model based on the fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method for measuring the performance of software development projects. In an MCDM problem, a decision maker (DM) has to choose the best alternative that satisfies the evaluation criteria among a set of candidate solutions. It is generally hard to find an alternative that meets all the criteria simultaneously, so a good compromise solution is preferred. This problem may become more complex when multiple DMs are involved, each having not a common perception on the alternatives. Recently, a compromise ranking method (known as the VIKOR method) has been proposed to identify such compromise solutions, by providing a maximum group utility for the majority and a minimum of an individual regret for the opponent. In its actual setting, the method treats exact values for the assessment of the alternatives, which can be quite restrictive with unquantifiable criteria. This will be true especially if the evaluation is made by means of linguistic terms. For this reason we extend the VIKOR method so as to process such data and to provide a more comprehensive evaluation in a fuzzy environment. To demonstrate the potential of the methodology, the proposed extension is used for measuring the performance of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software products.

The Effects of User Partnering and User Non-Support on Project Performance

Information system software development projects suffer from a high failure rate. One of many obstacles faced by project managers is non-supportive users, those not actively sharing in development responsibilities. The coordination activity of early partnering has been proposed in the literature to promote collaboration and enhance user support. The extent of partnering is considered in a model that relates partnering to the risks of user non-support and eventual project success. The model is developed from contingency theory, with residual performance risk as an intermediary variable. A survey of IS project membership provides the data, which indicates that partnering significantly relates to higher user support, less residual risk, and better project performance. Researchers may use variations on the model to examine other barriers to success and the techniques applied to lower the barriers. Practitioners should consider applying partnering techniques to improve software development project performance.

Communication and performance in software development projects

A study of 21 software development (SD) project groups using data from 170 participants holding different positions (engineers, user representatives, project managers) and a quasi-longitudinal design shows that user participation inhibits, and standardization of methods and tools facilitates, effective SD project performance. Over and above these effects, hierarchical regression analysis reveals taskrelated internal communication to predict performance positively. Moderated regression analysis reveals that high communication facilitates project performance more strongly in late stages of the project life-cycle and when standardization of methods and tools is low. Implications for facilitating SD projects' functioning, for future research and theory building, are discussed.

The Effect of Coordination and Uncertainty on Software Project Performance: Residual Performance Risk as an Intervening Variable

In this research, a study of the effects of coordination mechanisms and risk drivers such as project uncertainty on the performance of software development projects was conducted. Two types of coordination mechanisms were considered: vertical and horizontal. The former refers to the extent to which coordination between users and IS staff is undertaken by authorized entities such as project managers or steering committees. The latter refers to the extent to which coordination is undertaken through mutual adjustments and communications between users and IS staff. A new research model was developed by synthesizing research using the structural contingency perspective from Organization Theory and the risk-based perspective in Software Engineering. The model suggests that residual performance risk, i.e., the difficulty in estimating performance-related outcomes during the later stages of the project, can clarify the relationship between project uncertainty, coordination mechanisms and performance. Eight hypotheses were derived from the model for empirical testing. Data were collected from 64 software development projects in the banking and other industries. The results provide considerable support for a revised research model. As expected, project uncertainty increases residual performance risk. Both in turn have a direct negative effect on performance. Vertical coordination significantly reduces both project uncertainty and residual performance risk. However, horizontal coordination does not have any significant effect on residual performance risk. Instead, it has a direct positive effect on project performance. Moreover, higher levels of both vertical and horizontal coordination lead to higher levels of overall performance. Their differential impacts on residual performance risk are interesting areas of future research.

Influence of task type on the relationship between communication and performance: the case of software development

AbstractThe relationships between communication patterns and performance of software development projects mostly resemble those of technical services, and not development projects, in hardware R&D. The local focus of software development projects in their information requirements is emphasized by the positive influence only of the informal and mostly internal literature, while external contacts, participation in conferences, and formal and external literature were inconsequential. The implications are two‐fold: a) on the conceptual level they suggest that a trade‐off between coordination and innovation requirements of the task might be an important determinant of optimal communication patterns; b) on the practical level it suggests that ‘software development’ consists of ‘software engineering’ and ‘software production’. Consequently, it should be recognized that as such, these activities should be managed differently—the former as R&D, the latter as manufacturing.