Post software projects evaluation : an investigation into the factors that affect software project success failure in Jordanian firms

Dissertant

al-Tarawinah, Muhammad Mahmud

Thesis advisor

al-Shaykh, Isam

Comitee Members

Dudayn, Basil
Abbud, Sattar Jabbar
Hattab, Izz al-Din Shakir Hasan

University

Arab Academy for Financial and Banking Sciences

Faculty

The Faculty of Information Systems and Technology

Department

Computer information systems

University Country

Jordan

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Date

2008

English Abstract

Software project management is one of the most challenging in software development.

Proper project planning and control is not possible without a sound and reliable management.

Therefore project manager must be aware of risks or inherent risks affecting the software projects.

This research presents empirical finding on the software Success / failure factors that significantly contribute to software project Success / failure and frequency of it occurrence in Jordanian firms.

The findings demonstrate that User's misunderstanding of needed requirements is one of the reasons that lead to imperfection of requirements and changing them during working on the system, User involvement process minimizing resistance change for new system that is the user who intended to be involved within teamwork should have a positive role to protect the project and tries to convince the others with the importance of the project for the institution in all.

Also the research examines the role of cultural factors in software development, such as the Project Communication Management, Information Distribution and Behaviors and Attitudes, The population of the study consists of all Jordanian institutions (n = 96) work in software development.

From the previous studies that were reviewed and the applied study that done by researchers in Jordanian firms it is clear for us the importance of cultural factors.

So it is important for project team to deal with these factors in serious and careful manner.

Project manager and team must have good knowledge in how to deal with these factors.

Project manager and his team should make equivalence and comparison between the benefits of proposed system and the actual gaining that present in old system for both groups and individuals in organization, and persuade the gaining from proposed system better and more benefits for the individuals and groups in organization than old present system.

The main objective of this research is to identify the most important software project success / failure factors in the Jordanian firms especially that involved projects and frequency of it occurrences.

The study revealed that each project has its privacy in requirements collection process by the user and analyzing these requirements; also if these requirements don't identify accurately, this may cause failure to the project; documentation mechanism considered as an important requirement that is through revising available documents in Jordanian institutions there was no documentation mechanism for requirements in order to revise it with systems users when finishing these systems at the end.

User involvement process minimizing resistance change for new system that is the user who intended to be involved within teamwork should have a positive role to protect the project and tries to convince the others with the importance of the project for the institution in all; also this user should have a role in communication flexibility process between system development team and system users because he / she is the only one who can explain the teamwork and his /her co workers views.

Based on deep analysis of the literature and our findings, we suggest a theoretical framework for software project success.

We believe that Software project management is a lengthy undertaking involving a set of complex activities that take a lot of time and cost.

The success in such an undertaking depends on good and reliable estimation.

Based on the above analysis, we classify software project success factors into four categories: organizational factors which are the presence of formal methodology, clear business objective, executive support and project scope, technical factors that are standard software infrastructure, understanding requirements and managing requirements changes and reliable estimates, people factors that are user involvement and experienced project manager, and the cultural factors which involve organizational culture.

Also in the analysis, a relationship was found between the organizational factors, people factors, technical factors and the cultural factor.

Main Subjects

Information Technology and Computer Science

Topics

• Management
• Development
• Business enterprises
• Jordan

No. of Pages

144

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-306299