Success Of Software Projects Research Articles

The risk analysis of software projects based on Bayesian Network

With the improvingof software technology and the level of project management, the success of software project is not a special case. But this does not mean that software project can be finished easily. In fact, The success ratio of software project is still low. The existing of Software system aim to reducej the uncertainty of practical system, but the process of itself is full of uncertainty. So it is essential to identify and analyze the software risk. Now lots of researches focus on the software project risk analysis, which apply a number of qualitative methods and quantitative methods. But most of methods ignore the dynamic nature of software project, only paying attention to predict in advance or analyze afterwards, which cannot meet the challenge of sorgware project management. So Bayesian network which canprovide real-time analysis is selected to analyze the software project risks. Through literature review and investigation of Chinese software professionals, the paper finds out 12 risk factors. In terms of an ERP project, revising above-mentioned risk factors, according to easy expansibility of topological structure and strong self-learning ability of Bayesian network, the paper uses priori knowledge and posterior knowledge to analyze the risk of the ERP project requirment period. Actual application shows that Bayesian network provide an effective system method for software project risk analysis.

Coordination in co-located agile software development projects

Agile software development provides a way to organise the complex task of multi-participant software development while accommodating constant project change. Agile software development is well accepted in the practitioner community but there is little understanding of how such projects achieve effective coordination, which is known to be critical in successful software projects. A theoretical model of coordination in the agile software development context is presented based on empirical data from three cases of co-located agile software development. Many practices in these projects act as coordination mechanisms, which together form a coordination strategy. Coordination strategy in this context has three components: synchronisation, structure, and boundary spanning. Coordination effectiveness has two components: implicit and explicit. The theoretical model of coordination in agile software development projects proposes that an agile coordination strategy increases coordination effectiveness. This model has application for practitioners who want to select appropriate practices from agile methods to ensure they achieve coordination coverage in their project. For the field of information systems development, this theory contributes to knowledge of coordination and coordination effectiveness in the context of agile software development.

Simulation-based Feature Selection for Software Requirements Baseline

Requirements baseline is the set of features intended to be delivered in a specific version of a software application under development. During this decade the constant growth of software products along with the evident pressure on time to market has made the selection of features a crucial step for a software project success. It is both a challenging and time consuming process that requires a substantial expertise from project managers. Prioritization of features is one of the means that help in making the choice. It is typically performed by grouping features into three priority levels: critical, important, and useful. Critical and important features are seen as “must have”, while useful features are qualified as “nice-to-have”. Paradoxically, the latter plays an important role in customer satisfaction and achieving the “wow” factor. A good selection of useful features identifies efficiently those features that can be delivered by the end of the project without any additional delay. So far, managers have little support in this process increasing the chances of making a poor selection. To answer this need, we propose a new modeling and simulation approach that takes into account feature priorities and calculates the probabilities of having useful features implemented within the timeframe of the project. It also incorporates uncertainties related to human resources availability providing a more realistic schedule and estimation.

Automatic Risk Identification in Software Projects: an Approach based on Inductive Learning

Effective risk management is very important to increase the probability of success in software projects. Indeed, like other types of projects, software projects are also susceptible to various problems that can lead to the cancelation of their development or to the development of systems that do not meet the client’s requirements. One of the main active- ties of risk management is the risk identification, because the list of risks generated in this activity is used all along the risk control process. Thus, this work proposes the creation of an expert system which is capable of identifying risks in software projects by using the lessons inductively learned from similar software projects already developed. By using this proposed expert system, project managers and software developers must be able to avoid errors of the past.

A New Maturity Model for Requirements Engineering Process: An Overview

It is widely acknowledged that Requirements Engineering (RE) has an important implication for the overall success of software or system development projects. As more and more organizations consider RE as the principal problem areas in the projects, improving RE process therefore appears critical for future business success. Moreover, nowadays there are evidences that support improving RE process maturity can contributes to improved business performance. There exist generic Software Process Improvement (SPI) standards, specialised RE process improvement models as well as guidance and advices on RE. However, they suffer from various issues that limit their adoption by organizations that are interested to assess and improve their RE process capability. Therefore, the research presented in this paper proposes a new RE process improvement model. The model is built by adapting and expanding the structure of the continuous representation of the formal maturity framework Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) through three rounds of development and validation stages, which involved RE and CMMI expert panel in the software industry. This paper aims to provide an overview on what, why and how we build the maturity model for RE. The intention is to provide a foundation for future development in the area of RE process improvement.

Key Success Factors in Software Development Projects

Software development projects are complex. Coupled with technical factors, anomalies that are environment-contingent often influence such projects. Human capital, being a vital resource for project delivery, undoubtedly plays a critical role in software development projects but studies that ascertain the extent to which technicalities and conventional factors, like human resource, influence development are limited. This is in light of the recent emergence of development methodological frameworks that act as nomenclatures, which aim to eliminate development ambiguities. After the emergence of such a centralized approach to software development management, process iteration practices, such as Agile, which downplay the formality of central methods approach have complicated the processes and this has resulted in an ideological stand-off between the management and the development ‘classes’ of a standard software development project. While a standard model helps benchmark and standardize process tasks for predictable outcomes, it may equally be lengthy and slow in a development environment that is often highly dynamic and rapid. Likewise, without rapidity, software projects risk potential project losses. To understand this process, a study involving 56 professional software development professionals was conducted in August 2011. It was ascertained that complexities and the primary indicators of project success forms can differ based on the respondent’s project role; likewise, the study also confirmed the factors that influence software project success.

The Requirements Stability of Control and Measure about Software Project

In the development of software project, requirements stability is an important factor which relates to success or failure of software project. This paper made a detailed analysis of the factors of affecting the requirements stability, proposed the control method of the requirements change, and has conducted the research on the measure of the requirements stability for achieving the purpose to grasp the degree of the requirements change effectively, minimize the defects and risks caused by it, and ensure the successful completion of software project according to a predetermined cost, schedule, and quality.

Exploring Risk Dimensions in the Indian Software Industry

The success of software projects is quite subjective in nature and is fettered by many risks, the perception of which varies from individual to individual and largely depends on the demographic characteristics of the executives and even the characteristics of the project. This study aims to identify and gauge the software risk dimensions and analyze the differences of perception among executives toward software risks. The contributions of this study untangle the issues underlying risks in the software industry and associates these issues with the perception of the “human” factor present in the industry.

Toward better software test estimates and requirement tracking

Estimating the effort and cost, and developing the project schedule are very important for building a successful software project. But estimation is hard. There is always pressure from project sponsor and management for software development team to commit to shorter schedule and lower cost. It is no exception for testing. Test is a key activity for software quality. Some of the main challenges in testing today are to match the test cases with requirements correctly, and to provide accurate estimates and track the test progress accordingly. In this paper, we present a parametric model for software test estimate along with a test graph for matching test cases with requirements and test cases analysis to aid in producing a more accurate estimates and tracking. The model and the test graph can be used jointly or individually. The model and the test graph have been used by multi-million-dollar software projects for more than three years. It is shown that they produced very accurate estimations, within 10% of deviation, even with very high requirement volatility.

Understanding need of "Uncertainty Analysis" in the system Design process

Software project development process is requiring accurate software cost and schedule estimation for achieve goal or success. A lot it referred to as the Intricate brainteaser because of its conscience attribute which is impact by complexity and uncertainty, Generally estimation is not as difficult or puzzling as people think. In fact, generating accurate estimates is straightforward-once you understand the intensity of uncertainty and module which contribute itself process. In our everyday life, we enhance our estimation based on past experience in which problem solve by which method and in which condition and which opportune provide that method to produce better result . So, Instead of unexplained treatises and inflexible modeling techniques, this will guide highlights a proven set of procedures, understandable formulas, and heuristics that individuals and complete team can apply to their projects to help achieve estimation ability with choose appropriate development approaches In the early stage of software life cycle project manager are inefficient to estimate the effort, schedule, cost estimation and its development approach .This in turn, confuses the manager to bid effectively on software project and choose incorrect development approach. That will directly effect on productivity cycle and increase level of uncertainty. This becomes a strong cause of project failure. So to avoid such problem if we know level and sources of uncertainty in model design, It will directive the developer to design accurate software cost and schedule estimation. which are require l for software project success. This paper demonstrates need of uncertainty analysis module at the modeling process for assist to recognize modular uncertainty system development process and the role of uncertainty at different stages in the modeling

A taxonomy for measuring the success of open source software projects

Open Source Software (OSS) has been widely adopted by organizations as well as individual users and has changed the way software is developed, deployed and perceived. Research into OSS success is critical since it provides project leaders with insights into how to manage an OSS project in order to succeed. However, there is no universally agreed definition of “success” and researchers employ different dimensions (e.g., project activity and project performance) to refer to OSS success. By conducting a rigorous literature survey, this paper seeks to take a holistic view to explore various areas of OSS success that have been studied in prior research. Finally it provides a measurement taxonomy including six success areas for OSS projects. Implications for theory and practice are presented.

English

  Although there have been studies completed on the critical success factors of software projects, these studies all have been specific to one particular country. There has been no comprehensive study reporting on different project sizes in various domains and in multiple countries. We present our extensive literature survey of critical success factors that impact software projects. Forty-three articles from the years 1990 to 2010 were found to be significant contributions that could be analysed in order to develop a list of critical factors that specifically affect the success of software projects. The method of content analysis and frequency analysis was adopted. Twenty-six critical success factors were found to be related to software project success. We suggest that organisation or project manager is attentive to control the top five critical factors to drive towards project success since the percentage of frequency of occurrences for each is more than 50%. Also, it appears that non-technical factors (94%) dominated over technical factors (6%). In a result unique to our study compared with previous one, we found that the factors of clear and frozen requirements, realistic estimation of the schedule and budget, along with a competent project manager are the five most critical success factors of software projects.   Key words: Critical success factors, software project management, comparative study, project failure, project success.

A Suggested Theoretical Framework for Software Project Success

Current literature on software project management indicates that the majority of software projects either are considered a failure or challenged. These projects are characterized by exceeding budget, exceeding time, and failing to meet customer expectations. The fact that most projects fail highlights the need for research regarding the factors that lead to software project success or failure. This paper presents a theoretical framework for software project success. Based on deep analysis of current literature on software success factors, a theoretical framework is formulating. The suggested framework shows factors that have to be carefully considered in order to achieve software project success. The factors included in the framework are dividing into four categories: organizational factors, technical factors, people factors, and culture factors. The suggested framework is new in the sense that it includes many factors that are not founding together in any of the previous similar frameworks.

A Mixed Mode Analysis of the Impact of Requirement Volatility on Software Project Success

Requirement volatility has been identified as a significant risk factor behind software project success. This paper describes our findings of a 2-phase study comprising of interviews and surveys on the preparedness of organizations in managing requirement volatility and the resultant effect on project success and failure. Findings illuminate on the current level of awareness and management response to the problem of requirement volatility affecting software projects. The subjective treatment of project success/failure is brought ou t, and the association with requirement volatility is explored. Results are expected to lead to better governance mechanisms and improve project success rates under requirement volatility. INTRODUCTION Requirement volatility which refers to the change to requirements during the software development life cycle surfaces as a frequent and high impact risk in numerous empirical studies performed to identify risk factors, or to understand variables leading to a project's success or failure (Davis et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2008; Schmidt et al., 2001). The problem assumes a greater significance in the present context of increasing technical and business complexity, and hence management of requirements becomes a prerequisite behind successful project outcomes (Chen et al., 2004; Ferreira et al., 2009). Here we investigate the organizational awareness of requirement volatility, different approaches used for managing and measuring volatility, and its overall association with project success. The study also brings out the multiple perspective regarding software project success and failure, factors instrumental behind success of endangered projects, and prominent reasons to failure. Process model selection factors and characteristics under unsatisfactory outcomes have also been indicated. A process model (synonymously known as systems development life cycle model) referred above relates to a conceptual model used in IT project management that describes the stages involved in an information system development project, from an initial feasibility study through maintenance of the completed application. This research project was carried out in two phases. An exploratory research design was employed in the 1st phase where requirement volatility and its association to project attributes and management techniques were examined in depth. Senior project managers associated with software development were interviewed for gathering insights on the problem. Content analysis of interview data revealed insights for further investigation. A web based survey utilized in the 2nd phase attempts to validate some of the observations of the 1st phase. This article identifies the different research questions that emerges out of the findings of phases one and two, and addresses them in light of the available evidences in the survey data. Findings of the interviews have been reported simultaneously to strengthen our claim, and also to report contrasting viewpoints and arguments. This article is organized as follows. A review of relevant literatures is provided next. The subsequent section lists the different research questions. It is then followed by sections on methodology, study outcome, and a discussion on the results. The concluding section summarizes the key findings. LITERATURE REVIEW Requirement volatility has surfaced as a common and frequent risk item in studies on software project risks (Boehm, 1991; Davis et al., 2008; Tiwana & Keil, 2004). Studies on requirement volatility have suggested metrics for measuring volatility, analyze factors behind its causes and effects on project development, and recommend possible ways to manage the problem. Some of the proposed metrics of volatility include measuring it in terms of quantity of changes (Ambriola & Gervasi, 2000; Costello & Liu, 1995; MIL STD-198, 1994), timing of occurrence of the changes (Javed et al. …

Performance Evaluation of Software Project Leader Training Course

Success of software project largely relies on its leader’s management ability and strong leadership. We have started a leader developing program called “Software Project Leader Training Course” since 2005 to make numbers of well trained leader and to minimize the risk of project failure. This report describes the results of the course done from 2005 through 2011, and evaluates them over progresses of students and contributions to their businesses.

Requirement Engineering Critical Issues in Public SectorSoftware Project Success Factor

Requirements engineering is an important component of effective software engineering. The existing literature suggests that effective requirement engineering can lead to improved productivity, quality, and risk management. More research is needed to explain benefits of implementing the RE process to software project development. This finding is part of our research in developing requirement engineering best practices. It is targeted to organizations who want to apply requirement engineering process in their software project development. The development team who are responsible in gathering requirements should understand in depth about the RE process. The new RE Process model for the public sector is defined. This RE model will be implemented by the actors identified. We determine appropriate software project success factor for the organization. There are seven software project success factors that contribute to the development of software projects particularly in Malaysia's Public Sector. We determine general issues that are related to software project success factor (SPSF). A pilot test was conducted with IT Manager in Malaysian Public Sectors. The result shows, the respondent mediums agree with the business rules, business process and manager is SPSF. They neutral agree with technology, stakeholder and developer is SPSF. We derived the SPSF to the critical issues mainly for developing best practice for software projects requirement in software project development.

Formal model for assigning human resources to teams in software projects

Context Human resources play a critical role in software project success. However, people are still the least formalized factor in today’s process models. Generally, people are assigned to roles and project teams are formed on the basis of project leaders’ experience of people, constraints (e.g. availability) and skill requirements. Yet this process has to take multiple factors into account. Few works in the literature model this process. Most of these are informal proposals focusing on the individual assignment of people to project tasks and do not consider other aspects like team formation as a whole. Objective In this paper we formulate a formal model for assigning human resources to software project teams. Additionally, we describe the key results of the knowledge management process enacted to output the elements of the model. Method The model elements were identified using the Delphi expert consultation method and applying psychological tests. The proposed model was implemented in a software tool and validated on two software development organization assignment scenarios. Results We built a formal model for the process of assigning human resources to software project teams. This model takes into account as many factors as possible and aids the assignment of individuals to project roles, as well as the formation of the team as a whole. We found that the rules that were identified to form software development project teams are useful. From the tests we found that model implementation was feasible (all the executions of the implemented problem-solving algorithms output feasible solutions in response times that can be considered as acceptable). Conclusion Using the Delphi method we were able to propose software project roles and competences. Psychological tests and data mining tools identified useful rules for forming software project teams. These were used to build a formal model. This model was built into a tool that returns role assignments in acceptable response times. This decision support tool helps managers assign people to roles and to form teams. Using the tool, project leaders can flexibly evaluate different team make-ups, taking into account several factors, as well as different constraints and objectives.

Socialization in Open Source Software Projects: A Growth Mixture Modeling Approach

The success of open source software (OSS) projects depends heavily on the voluntary participation of a large number of developers. To remain sustainable, it is vital for an OSS project community to maintain a critical mass of core developers. Yet, only a small number of participants (identified here as ‘‘joiners’’) can successfully socialize themselves into the core developer group. Despite the importance of joiners’ socialization behavior, quantitative longitudinal research in this area is lacking. This exploratory study examines joiners’ temporal socialization trajectories and their impacts on joiners’ status progression. Guided by social resource theory and using the growth mixture modeling (GMM) approach to study 133 joiners in 40 OSS projects, the authors found that these joiners differed in both their initial levels and their growth trajectories of socialization and identified four distinct classes of joiner socialization behavior. They also found that these distinct latent classes of joiners varied in their status progression within their communities. The implications for research and practice are correspondingly discussed.

Putting Human Aspects of Software Engineering in University Curricula

Although people-related issues are central factors in determining the success of software projects, they do not receive sufficient attention in the software industry to improve project results. This essay describes two barriers to their getting more attention: barriers that originate in the academic status and positioning of software engineering. The essay also proposes several suggestions regarding the professional development of software practitioners.

User participation in software development projects

Introduction It is commonly acknowledged that success in IT projects is difficult to achieve. A recent industry survey observed that only 34% of IT projects were considered successful. Of the several potential factors contributing to this hard-to-achieve success, user involvement was noted as the most important one. Consistent with this notion, both researchers and practitioners have viewed user participation as an important way of improving software quality and increasing user satisfaction and acceptance. Users/customers are often encouraged to participate and directly communicate with developers in the software development process. On the other hand, empirical evidence shows that user participation in the development process can negatively influence project performance since it could make the process more difficult, lengthy, and less effective. Such contradictory findings raise the question of when user participation is actually helpful and when it might negatively impact project performance. Previous research tells only one side of the story since it has examined user participation or project performance by focusing primarily on user viewpoints. The findings give an incomplete picture since they have not thoroughly addressed developer viewpoints. Clearly, there is a need to investigate software project success from the perspective of developers given that not only are they at the core of development process but they also represent the largest single cost in software development. Developer satisfaction is imperative for systems development success. Dissatisfied developers would adversely affect the quality of software as well as the productivity of development teams. A high rate of developer turnover in projects (due to dissatisfaction) could lead to increasing costs for development firms as well as high user/customer dissatisfaction. Due to the differences in background and circumstance, developers and users often share different and sometimes conflicting interests during software development. Researchers have identified a large gap in perceptions and definitions of project success between developers and the software industry (for example, users/customers). For example, developers tend to be achievement-oriented and are intrinsically motivated to develop excellent software, while users/ customers emphasis more on meeting a schedule or maintaining a budget. Thus, the potential conflicting interests between users and developers might negatively affect the software development performance. This article addresses the question of the relative effectiveness of user participation by empirically examining the perceived software project performance (for example, satisfaction) from both user and developer perspectives simultaneously. We used survey data from 117 software development projects and 746 respondents at a large Fortune 100 manufacturing firm during a four-year time period to investigate the impact of user participation on the satisfaction of both developers and users. Our findings offer insights into the impact of user participation on generating higher levels of developer and user satisfaction and, at the same time, minimizing the perception gap between users and developers on project performance. In addition, we also study the role of software complexity (for example, whether projects involve new software development as opposed to maintenance of existing software) in user participation and its effect on satisfaction. Questionnaire data was collected from 453 software developers and 293 users/customers working on 117 software projects (for details of the data collection process, see the sidebar "How the Survey was Conducted"). The average number of developer survey respondents per project (for example, team) was four and the average number of user/customer respondents per project was three. Our analysis was performed at project level, and satisfaction scores for developers and users were averaged for each project. Of the 117 software development projects, 45 (39% of our sample) were maintenance projects and 72 (61%) were new development projects. The average software development time of the 117 software projects was 126 days. Figure 1 outlines the project characteristics in our sample. The most common business domain for our software projects was the manufacturing and supply chain (41 projects, 35%) and most of the projects were Web-based applications (78 projects, 66%).