Software development project success: perspectives of project managers and developers in a South African bank.

Abstract

Many researchers have attempted to define software development project success. While common factors have been found, the success of software projects in all industries cannot be judged by the same factors. Success is complex and means different things to different people. This study investigated what factors project managers and software developers, in a South African Bank, believed contributed to software development project success. The reasons why software developers and project managers were investigated were because software developers have a technical background whilst project managers have a business background. There were 41 respondents consisting of six project managers and 35 software developers that answered the questionnaire. Six participants were interviewed: four developers and two project managers. A case study research was adopted for this study. The results showed that there are many significant factors that contribute to success and failure. The study was divided into four categories to investigate the different success factors. These categories were individual, team, organisational and project. The most critical success factor from this study was the projects being strictly according to the on brief. This showed the software being built must fulfil the requirements that were defined in the project brief. The least important success factor was employees having more than ten years of experience. This showed that this group of respondents do not believe that such a high level of experience is directly related to project success. Respondents were also asked what they thought would lead to software project failure. The factor that was considered most significant was not understanding requirements. An individual factor that stood out was the level of skill of the staff. Both groups of employees believe that having the appropriate skills to do one’s job, contributes significantly to the success of a project. The only factors where project managers and developers responded significantly differently were when they were asked about work life balance and job satisfaction. Developers seemed to consider these factors more important than project managers. Project managers and software developers considered the scope and size of a project critical to project success as it ranked as the second most critical factor. Other critical success factors that appeared in the top five were the level of skill of staff, clearly defined business objectives and understanding requirements. This study contributes to existing literature as it shows that success factors that other researchers found cannot be generalized to all individuals, teams, organisations and projects. This study investigated what factors, project managers and software developers in this digital banking business unit considered to contribute to the success of a project. It concluded that there are many factors that contribute to success however, projects being on brief was the most important factor. Even though this study only investigated the views of project managers and software developers, there are other IT professionals that could offer different insights as to what success means to them. This study could therefore be expanded to include business analysts, system analysts and testers.