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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

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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").

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Cited By

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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
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Balancing four factors in system development projects

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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]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 October 2009

Published in CACM Volume 52, Issue 10

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

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