research-article

Free access

Balancing four factors in system development projects

Authors:

Girish H. Subramanian,

Gary Klein,

James J. Jiang,

Chien-Lung ChanAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 52, Issue 10

Pages 118 - 121

https://doi.org/10.1145/1562764.1562794

Published: 01 October 2009 Publication History

All formats PDF

Abstract

Introduction

The success of system development is most often gauged by three primary indicators: the number of days of deviation from scheduled delivery date, the percentage of deviation from the proposed budget, and meeting the needs of the client users. Tools and techniques to help perform well along these dimensions abound in practice and research. However, the project view of systems development should be broader than any particular development tool or methodology.

Any given development philosophy or approach can be inserted into a systems development project to best fit the conditions, product, talent, and goals of the markets and organization. In order to best satisfy the three criteria, system development project managers must focus on the process of task completion and look to apply controls that ensure success, promote learning within the team and organization, and end up with a software product that not only meets the requirements of the client but operates efficiently and is flexible enough to be modified to meet changing needs of the organization. In this fashion, the project view must examine both process and product.

Often, tasks required for project completion seem contradictory to organizational goals. Within the process, managerial controls are applied in order to retain alignment of the product to the initial, and changing, requirements of the organization. However, freedom from tight controls promotes learning. The product also has contradictions among desired outcomes. Designers must consider tradeoffs between product efficiency and flexibility, with the trend in processing power leading us ever more toward the flexibility side. Still, we rage between conflicting criteria, with the advocates of a waterfall system development lifecycle (SDLC) usually pushing more for control aspects and efficient operations while agile proponents seek more of a learning process and flexible product.

Regardless of the development methodology followed, project managers must strive to deliver the system on time, within budget, and to meet the requirements of the user. Thus, both product and process are crucial in the determination of success. To compound the difficulties, those in control of choosing an appropriate methodology view success criteria from a different perspective than other stakeholders. Understanding how different stakeholders perceive these factors impacting eventual project success can be valuable in adjusting appropriate methodologies. Our study looks at these relationships using well established instruments in a survey of IS development professionals to better clarify the importance of these variables in system project success and any perceived differences among different players in IS development (see the sidebar on "How the Study Was Conducted").

References

[1]

Armour, P. G. The business of software: To plan, two plans. Comm. ACM 48, 9 (Sept. 2005), 15--19.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[2]

Augustine, S., Payne, B., Sencindiver, F., and Woodcock, S. Agile project management: steering from the edges. Comm. ACM 48,12 (Dec. 2005), 85--89.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Boehm, B. Get ready for agile methods, with care. Computer (Jan. 2002), 64--69.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Hardgrave, B. C. and Armstrong, D. J. Software process improvement: it's a journey, not a destination. Comm. ACM 48, 11 (Nov. 2005), 93--96

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[5]

Kirsch, L. Deploying common systems globally: The dynamics of control. Information Systems Research 48, 4 (2004), 484--498.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[6]

Klein, G., Jiang, J., and Sobol, M. Consonance in information systems, in Strategies and Organizations in Transition, C. S. Galbraith, ed., Elsevier Science, Ltd., (2001), 191--210.

Google Scholar

[7]

Larson, E. Partnering on construction projects: a study of the relationship between partnering activities and project success. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 44, (1997), 188--195.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[8]

Nerur, S, Mahapatra, R and Mangalaraj, G. Challenges of migrating to agile methodologies. Comm. ACM 48, 5 (May 2005), 72--78.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. The Knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford University Press, NY, 1995.

Google Scholar

[10]

Procaccino, D. Verner, J. and Lorenzer, S. J. Defining and contributing to software development success. Comm. ACM 49, 8, (Aug. 2006), 79--83.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[11]

Tiwana, A. and Keil, M. The one-minute risk assessment tool. Comm. ACM 47, 11, (Nov. 2004), 73--77.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Wu XTsai JLei Y(2023)Information Technology Project Management Research: A Review of Works by Influential PioneersProject Management Journal10.1177/8756972823117105654:4(366-391)Online publication date: 29-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/87569728231171056
Sharma M(2019)Building a hierarchical structure model of enablers that affect the software process improvement in Software SMEs- a mixed method approachComputer Standards & Interfaces10.1016/j.csi.2019.04.009Online publication date: Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2019.04.009
Khan HMalik MChofreh AGoni F(2017)Situational Requirement Engineering in Global Software DevelopmentRecent Trends in Information and Communication Technology10.1007/978-3-319-59427-9_89(863-874)Online publication date: 27-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59427-9_89
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Balancing four factors in system development projects

Recommendations

Agile software development projects–Unveiling the human-related critical success factors
Highlights
- We examine the human factors that contribute to agile software development success.
- Team capability has a strong effect on the success of agile software development.
- Customer involvement has a strong effect on the success of agile ...
Abstract Context
Investment in information technology is associated with better business performance when its implementation is successful, but it has high costs in case of failure, especially for large software development projects, which typically have ...
Piloting XP on Four Mission-Critical Projects

Software development teams face a continuous battle to increase productivity while maintaining or improving quality. Often, a project's mandated ship date requires that software development begin with only a portion of the requirements defined. Recently,...
A dependency taxonomy for agile software development projects

Agile software development is designed to achieve collaborative software development. A supporting pillar of collaboration is effective coordination, which is necessary to manage dependencies in projects. Understanding the dependencies arising in agile ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

Communications of the ACM Volume 52, Issue 10

A View of Parallel Computing

October 2009

134 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/1562764

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 October 2009

Published in CACM Volume 52, Issue 10

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Research-article
Popular
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

11
Total Citations
View Citations
2,646
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)218
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)18

Reflects downloads up to 01 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Wu XTsai JLei Y(2023)Information Technology Project Management Research: A Review of Works by Influential PioneersProject Management Journal10.1177/8756972823117105654:4(366-391)Online publication date: 29-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/87569728231171056
Sharma M(2019)Building a hierarchical structure model of enablers that affect the software process improvement in Software SMEs- a mixed method approachComputer Standards & Interfaces10.1016/j.csi.2019.04.009Online publication date: Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2019.04.009
Khan HMalik MChofreh AGoni F(2017)Situational Requirement Engineering in Global Software DevelopmentRecent Trends in Information and Communication Technology10.1007/978-3-319-59427-9_89(863-874)Online publication date: 27-May-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59427-9_89
Subramanian GPendharkar PPai D(2016)An Examination of Determinants of Software Testing and Project Management EffortJournal of Computer Information Systems10.1080/08874417.2016.118342857:2(123-129)Online publication date: 22-Jul-2016
https://doi.org/10.1080/08874417.2016.1183428
Clarke PO’Connor R(2015)Changing Situational Contexts Present a Constant Challenge to Software DevelopersSystems, Software and Services Process Improvement10.1007/978-3-319-24647-5_9(100-111)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24647-5_9
Khan Hbin Mahrin Mbt Chuprat S(2014)Situational requirement engineering framework for Global Software Development2014 International Conference on Computer, Communications, and Control Technology (I4CT)10.1109/I4CT.2014.6914179(224-229)Online publication date: Sep-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/I4CT.2014.6914179
Stare A(2014)Agile Project Management in Product Development ProjectsProcedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.034119(295-304)Online publication date: Mar-2014
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.034
Khan HMahrin MChuprat S(2013)Situational factors affecting Requirement Engineering process in Global Software Development2013 IEEE Conference on Open Systems (ICOS)10.1109/ICOS.2013.6735059(118-122)Online publication date: Dec-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICOS.2013.6735059
Clarke PO'Connor R(2012)The situational factors that affect the software development processInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2011.12.00354:5(433-447)Online publication date: 1-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.infsof.2011.12.003
Delene D(2010)Airborne data processing and analysis software packageEarth Science Informatics10.1007/s12145-010-0061-44:1(29-44)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-010-0061-4
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Magazine Site

View this article on the magazine site (external)

Magazine Site

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Agile software development projects–Unveiling the human-related critical success factors

Piloting XP on Four Mission-Critical Projects

A dependency taxonomy for agile software development projects

Comments

Information

Published In

Publisher

Publication History

Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View options

PDF

eReader

Magazine Site

Login options

Full Access

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations