Organizations’ Perspective on Success and Failure of In-House Software Development

Project success and failure is a question of perception and that the criteria could vary from project to project. A project that has been perceived to be a failure by one stakeholder may be perceived as a success by another. Knowledge and understanding of success and failure factors, as well as how to measure them and the interactions between these factors have great importance for project management effectiveness. The success or failure of Software Project management consists of two components, namely the technical and non-technical components of software development. Non-technical related components of software development process tend to be under managed. Therefore a study was conducted in India among the industries that are into in-house software development, to investigate the influence of the non-technical components of the software development process, on success and failure of software development from the organizations' perspective (Practitioners' view). This study reveals that from organizational perspective the level of customer/user involvement, project manager/staff and software process management contribute most to project success and failure.