Impact of scope management practices on completing software projects successfully

Abstract

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry is one of the fastest growing industries in Sri Lanka. This industry has set a target of achieving export revenues of US$ 1 billion and employment of 100,000 by year 2015. Software development is one of the main revenue and employment generators of the ICT industry in Sri Lanka. Software development is a very competitive business and companies engaged in this business are looking to bond with their stakeholders on a long term basis to get projects from ever increasing IT investments. However, failing to complete ongoing projects successfully is a major drawback for maintaining good relationships. Failure to deliver software products to stakeholders has been a major challenge to the software development companies in Sri Lanka. Therefore, achieving the set target by year 2015 will depend entirely on how software developers can tackle this problem. Generally, software development projects are considered failures if the project fails to meet the time schedule or the allocated budget. Inability to manage the scope of software development projects has been identified as the main reason behind these failures. The objective of this research is to identify the factors that affect the successful completion of software projects in Sri Lankan software development industry. The factors affecting software project success were identified from the literature and a conceptual model was developed. The conceptual model was validated from data collected from a company which has been in the software development industry for more than 35 years. The results indicate a strong, positive relationship between project successes and scope management practices. Further, data analysis revealed that defining the deliverables before starting the project, embracing changes in the on-going project, creating proper work behavior structure, and keeping automated scope controlling mechanisms in place have a moderate positive impact on software development project success.