Submitted By: Syed Khalil
St ID: S2016171023
Program: MS (PM)
Submitted to: Sir Talha ZubaiR
Table of Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u Abstract PAGEREF _Toc514643009 h 3Introduction PAGEREF _Toc514643010 h 3Background Of Research PAGEREF _Toc514643011 h 4Academic Utility PAGEREF _Toc514643012 h 4Practical Utility PAGEREF _Toc514643013 h 5Research Question PAGEREF _Toc514643014 h 5Objective Of The Study PAGEREF _Toc514643015 h 5Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc514643016 h 5Variables And Their Relationship PAGEREF _Toc514643017 h 5 PAGEREF _Toc514643018 h 6 PAGEREF _Toc514643019 h 6 PAGEREF _Toc514643020 h 6 PAGEREF _Toc514643021 h 6 PAGEREF _Toc514643022 h 6Hypothesis PAGEREF _Toc514643023 h 6Null Hypothesis PAGEREF _Toc514643024 h 6Alternate Hypothesis PAGEREF _Toc514643025 h 6Theoretical Framework PAGEREF _Toc514643026 h 6Research Methodology PAGEREF _Toc514643027 h 7Research Design And Strategy PAGEREF _Toc514643028 h 7Sampling PAGEREF _Toc514643029 h 8Size OF Sampling PAGEREF _Toc514643030 h 8Unit Of analysis PAGEREF _Toc514643031 h 8Population Of Interest PAGEREF _Toc514643032 h 8Data Analysis PAGEREF _Toc514643033 h 8Disscussions PAGEREF _Toc514643034 h 9
AbstractThere are many reasons why software projects fails. The Software development Projects failed when they are not Delivered on time, when they are not completed on given budget, when you not involve the end user in activities,when not have the clear undertanding of the client requirement what features and functions are required in the system.Mostof the Software project overruns the time and budget this is one of the greatest challenge in today’s market. This study aims to reduce the high rate of software projects,this paper focuses on the most common failure factors of software project and how to ovrcome it.
IntroductionSoftware has become an important part of modern society. It is playing a vital role in approximately every part of our lives. With the help of software it become very easy to create daily business reports, control the machines and robots, create a social network, software industry is playing an important part in increasing GDP and overall economy of any country.
However, even with the successful implementation of software in nearly all possible areas, software development projects have a repute that they often fail to deliver and there are various factors considered for failure of projects. Software Project managers and developers have to deal with many pressures from the stakeholders of project such as clients and end users of the system during the development phase of the software. These pressures impact on the quality of the system they developed.
There is generally more than one reason for the failure of a software project, it consists of two components, technical and non-technical components of software development. The technical issues of software development include those directly related to hardware, software and system. Non-technical issues relate to people and process-related components of the development process.
Client’s requirement is one of the major reason why the software projects are failed. Requirement is a key factor during every software development as it describes what stakeholders need and how the system will satisfy their needs. It helps the system analyst for the better understanding of the system, which elements and functions are necessary in the development. Requirements impacts on the productivity as well as product quality. If requirements are not clearly defined it will contributes towards the project failures.
Lack of User Involvement has focused in software projects. Without user involvement developers and project managers does not feels committed to a system. Software project failure is not involving the user from the start of the project and continuously throughout the development. The developer must involve the user, as it helps in requirements understanding and delivering all functionality of the project.
Team Size is also an important that leads towards the failure of the project. Proper team size is essential in software development project. There are different project team sizes. There is good communication in small teams as compared to large teams.It is easy to call meetings and get instant feedback. Projects sometimes fail due to improper communication among the teams.
Time dimension is important in software development process. An unsuccessful software projects is one that is not completed on require time and within allocated budget, and which has all the originally specified features and functions. Time and cost in software Project affects the development staff because late projects usually cause developers to suffer long hours of unpaid overtime that impacts on their personal lives, leading to loss of motivation, and stress, resulting in high staff turnover.
Software Testing is another important factor that leads towards project failure. The purpose of software testing is to detect bugs in project which causes software failures. Software testing is used to test each component of the system to meets the user requirement. The testing is done before project goes live and implemented. In other words testing is done for clients requirement assessments so that risks and bugs are identified and removed.
Project manager and team should not expect no change in requirements while a system is being built. As an environment constraints and client requirement keep on changing, developer must follow component driven approach while building the system.
There are many other several reasons that causes the project failure that are inaccurate estimates of needed resources, poor reporting of the project status, inability to handle project complexity, Lack of Executive Support, Technology Incompetence.
Background Of ResearchDeveloping software systems is an expensive and a difficult process as software development projects are affected by a series of problems, such as poor project management, cost and schedule overruns and many other factors.
A License Application Mitigation Project (LAMP) was launched by Department of Licensing in Washington State. It was found that $41.8 million was allocated to automate the registration and license process. The duration of the project was over 5 years. The project couldn’t be successfully completed and was cancelled by wasting almost $40 million. Now the question arises, that who to be blamed for such failures.
An example in 2005, Hudson Bay Co, Canada losses $33.3 million due to an inventory system problem and UK Inland revenue tax credit overpaid $3.45 billion due to software errors. These kind of errors and failures cause profit loss or project cancellations in organizations. Due to software project failures and cancellations, customers will have to bear high financial losses.
Academic Utility
The reasons behind the software project failure are lack of team collaboration, end user involvement, required sources, support technologies, clear requirement, quality testing of system are the key to software project failure. Therefore, there is a dire need for a systematic and comprehensive work that studies the collaborative effect of the factors on the failure of the software project.
Practical UtilityThis study helps the project managers and developers to take some necessary actions to manage the identified factors that leads to software failures. They will be able to understand how much affect the software project success. They could decide how much of attention should be paid on each and every factor and successful project deliverables.
Research Question
What are the factors that causes the software failures and how much these factors influences on software failures?
Objective Of The StudyResearch Objectives:
1) To identify the factors that leads toward the software project to failure.
2) To minimize the failures of software projects.
Literature Review
Variables And Their Relationship2914015179070Independent variable
0Independent variable
609600179070Dependent variables
0Dependent variables
8572530289500
2981325341630Software Project Failures
00Software Project Failures
66675055880Time Dimensions
00Time Dimensions
68580093980User Requirements
00User Requirements
752475450215Team Size
00Team Size
68580021590Lack Of User Involvement
00Lack Of User Involvement
771525462915Software testing
00Software testing
828675457200Software Cost
00Software Cost
HypothesisNull HypothesisH0: There is no significant effect of the factors on Software Project failures.
Alternate HypothesisH1: There is significant Effect of user requirement on software Project failures.
H2: There is significant Effect of Lack of User Involvement on software Project failures.
H3: There is significant Effect of large Team Size on software Project failures.
H4: There is significant Effect of Time dimension on software Project failures.
H5: There is significant Effect of software cost on software Project failures.
H6: There is significant Effect of software component testing on software Project failures.
Theoretical Framework
Research Methodology
Research Design And Strategy
This research is quantitative in nature, aiming to analyze the effects of cost, user requirement, and lack of user involvement, time dimensions, team size and testing on software project failures. The research will require respondents to use their daily working experience, how these factors influenced on project failure. The Principal theme of the research is to find out the effect of these factors (cost, lack of user requirement, team size, lack of user involvement, time dimensions and testing) dependent variables on (Software Project Success) independent variable.
In analyzing the factors that are responsible for software failure, Primary sources of data will be used for the collection of data, as data will collected through primary sources, so for this a structured survey questionnaire will be design for the collection of data. So, the instrument used to collect the data is a questionnaire.
The survey questionnaires will distributed among the respondents and respondents of the questionnaire will rank the questions on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 (1- strongly disagree, 2- disagree, 3- Neutral, 4- agree, 5- strongly agree), on the behalf of their working experience and the project on which they are currently working and have worked in recent past . The data analysis and interpretation will be based on the results of the survey questionnaires.
The questionnaire will have has two parts, first part will include the short profile of respondent like Age, Education , experience, Designation and second part will measures the variables like team size, Time duration, User Requirement, Lack of client involvement, cost and budget of project and other factors leads towards the software project failure.
Sampling
Convenience sampling technique will be used to collect data from Software Project Managers, Software Quality Assurance Managers, and Software Developers.
Size OF Sampling
Sample size for the data will also be 150.
Unit Of analysis
Software Project Managers, Software Quality Assurance Managers, Software Developers.
Population Of Interest
The population of this research are software Project managers, Software quality assurance Managers, Software developers. Data will be collected from the software developers, project and quality assurance manager’s working in software development and support companies located in Arfa Software Technology Park, I.T Tower and Siddique Trade Center.
Data Analysis
To analyze the data collected for this research study SPSS (Statistical package for social science) will be used. Data collected through questionnaires from the project managers, software developers and software quality assurance managers will be entered into SPSS software. Statistical data analysis techniques (Cronbach’s Alpha, regression analysis, factor analysis), will apply on the collected data.
The will be Cronbach’s Alpha will be used for the testing of reliability. To determine the relation between the independent and dependent variable Regression analysis will be used. Factor analysis will also be used, KMO test and Bartlett’s test will conducted.
After applying these tests, the results will be represented in the foam of tables and graphs for clear and easy to understand.
Discussions
This research emphasis on by considering the clients requirements and user involvement contributes towards the project. The other important factors should also be considered such as estimation of budget and time scheduling. These factors are not the only one that affect the success or failure of a project, but they are among the top of the list who are responsible for success and failures. This study suggest that the involvement of users should be in all phases of software development. User is the most important factor predicting the success and failure of any project. This study will help project managers to predict the likelihood of project success, in evaluating their current projects, and improve managerial decision-making as lessons learnt from this will applied to next software development projects. Findings of this study regarding the failure will help the software professionals to take corrective measures and move towards successful software development. They will develop new approach, model or techniques to minimize the failure factors in software development.
