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International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Improvement

PROFES 2005: Product Focused Software Process Improvement pp 385–398Cite as

Evaluation of Three Methods to Predict Project Success: A Case Study

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 3547))

Abstract

To increase the likelihood for software project success, it is important to be able to identify the drivers of success. This paper compares three methods to identify similar projects with the objective to predict project success. The hypothesis is that projects with similar characteristics are likely to have the same outcome in terms of success. Two of the methods are based on identifying similar projects using all available information. The first method of these aims at identifying the most similar project. The second method identifies a group of projects as most similar. Finally, the third method pinpoints some key characteristics to identify project similarity. Our measure of success for these identifications is whether project success for these projects identified as similar is the same. The comparison between methods is done in a case study with 46 projects with varying characteristics. The paper evaluates the performance of each method with regards to its ability to predict project success. The method using key drivers of project success is superior to the others in the case study. Thus, it is concluded that it is important for software developing organizations to identify its key project characteristics to improve its control over project success.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Systems and Software Engineering, School of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Box 520, SE-372 25, Ronneby, Sweden

    Claes Wohlin

  2. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 99164-2752, USA

    Anneliese Amschler Andrews

Authors
  1. Claes Wohlin
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  2. Anneliese Amschler Andrews
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), Fraunhofer Platz 1, 67663, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Frank Bomarius

  2. VTT Electronics, P.O. Box 1100, 90571, Oulu, Finland

    Seija Komi-Sirviö

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Wohlin, C., Andrews, A.A. (2005). Evaluation of Three Methods to Predict Project Success: A Case Study. In: Bomarius, F., Komi-Sirviö, S. (eds) Product Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3547. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11497455_31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11497455_31

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26200-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31640-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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