Impact of teamwork quality on software development project success: Sri Lankan context

Abstract

Software has become a very crucial in all facets of modern world by the growth of technology. A software development project (SDP) can be viewed as a set of activities performed by a set of developers. Software development is a complex activity that requires teamwork effectively. Teamwork is a dynamic process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal. According to the literature, Software project success can be measured using four indicators namely, cost, quality, time and scope and there is a significant relationship between teamwork quality (TWQ) and SDPs success. Most of researchers have done their research works on teamwork for German and Dutch SDPs. However we cannot apply these findings direct to Sri Lankan context. As found literature of social and cultural factors can be effect to performance of software development project. The main objective of this research is to come up with a framework to explain impact of TWQ for SDPs success. To achieve that objective, conceptual model was developed as mention in the figure. The model was derived from different models which are found in literature. Then the indicators which are used to measure TWQ factors and the SDPs success are identified. This study focuses on Qualitative Research approach and questionnaire is used as the technique of data collection. Participation selection is done through snowball sampling, making use of our network to make contact with organizations to ask for their willingness to participate. TWQ on SDP success is gaining an increasing interest within both academia and industry. The reasons for making this kind of research supporting strategic and operational management of SDPs to organize teams more efficiently and effectively. Our research work has ability to solve actual delay incurred by a software project due to lack of TWQ due to lower performance of team members. This is useful for Sri Lankan software industry to build and manage teams more constructively and adjust their management activities to improve team collaborations and team performance.