Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
There have been many measures taken to express the success of a project and the most
common among them are meeting schedule, budget, and performance goals. Different
organizations assess the success of projects in different ways and at different times.
Data collected from two experienced software project managers to assess measures of
project success. Project success could be assessed along at five distinct dimensions,
which are project efficiency, impact on the customer, direct and business success, and
preparing for the future and team satisfaction. The exact content of each dimension
and its relative importance may change with time and is contingent on the specific
stakeholder. The relationship between the implementation of the basic project
management activities and the project success were studied and assessed. Also, it was
a question whether the characteristics of the project, the project manager and the
company affect the intensity with which the basic project management activities are
implemented. The results also indicate that successful software process improvement
relies heavily on human factors, skills and teamwork competencies. A project manager
has to motivate the team members, coordinate their interactions and supervise them
when necessary to create a positive environment for the software development that
supports the overall project success.
1
1.0 Introduction
Many times software engineers lack the domain knowledge necessary to truly
understand the requirements and there is often no way to tell how long it will take to
acquire this knowledge. As a result, it is difficult to plan, estimate the size of, change,
and produce software. This is the reason software project manager plays a very
important part in managing a software development project. The role of the software
project manager is to plan, organize, staff, direct, and control. He or she deals with
ideas, things, and people (Munns A. and Bjeirmi B, 1996). Software development,
however, involves more scheduled activities effort than most other fields similar to it.
The software project manager has to commit to delivery of copies of the product before
the product has been completely developed.
2
Where companies have a unique and unfamiliar undertaking, the techniques of
software project management can be successfully implemented. These undertakings
would call for more and faster decision making techniques than possible in a normal
operation and making the right choices. Project success criteria have been measured
in a variety of ways. Although the conventional measurement of project success has
focused on tangibles, the current thinking is that, ultimately, project success is best
judged by the stakeholders, especially the primary sponsor (Turner & Zolin, 2012).
Project management success is the traditional measure of project success, measured at
project completion, and is primarily based on whether the output is delivered to time,
cost, and functionality (Atkinson, 1999).
According to Shenhar and Dvir (2007), there are five dimensions of project
success, such as project efficiency, team satisfaction, impact on the customer, business
success and preparing for the future. Below are the measures for the each success
dimensions
3
2.0 Methodology
Company background
Project manager background
Software Development Model used
Standards or model use for software project management
Project Success Factor
Project Planning
Project Costing
Project Monitoring and Control
Project Change and Configuration Management
Risk Management
Quality Assurance
Project Directing (Human Management)
Project Completion
The survey questions are attached in the appendix. I asked the respondents to judge
success in three categories:
Performance against the three components of project efficiency: time, cost, and
scope.
4
objective ways, but this may only apply to project efficiency. Some concepts such as
project success are not fully quantifiable and are impacted by subjective judgment.
5
3.0 Result
When the project managers were asked to assess the overall success of their
project, they intuitively adopted the business success as their top priority, where it
measures time performance, cycle time and total improvement of organization
performance. This is followed by preparing for the future, where it is the longest-term
dimension and involves questions such as how does the organization prepare for future
opportunities and does it build new skills that may be needed in the future, or develop
new technologies and core competencies.
22% 17%
Project efficiency
19% Team satisfaction
Impact on the customer
28%
Business success
14%
Preparing for the future
6
The outcomes of project management success are many. They would include
the obvious indicators of completion to budget, satisfying the project schedule,
adequate quality standards, and meeting the project goal (Munns and Bjeirmi, 1996).
The factors which may cause the project management to fail to achieve these would
include inadequate basis for project, wrong person as project manager, top
management being unsupportive, inadequately defined tasks, lack of project
management techniques, management techniques misused, project closedown not
planned and lack of commitment to project. These factors would suggest that
successful project management requires planning with a commitment to complete the
project, careful appointment of a skilled project manager, spending time to define the
project adequately, correctly planning the activities in the project, ensuring correct and
adequate information flows, changing activities to accommodate frequent changes on
dynamic, accommodating employees' personal goals with performance and rewards
and making a fresh start when mistakes in implementation have been identified.
7
4.0 Discussion
Software project managers must also have long-term benefits in mind. In many
cases, a long time may pass before success can be really evaluated and until long-term
expectations are met. Creating future opportunities or capabilities often makes the
difference between short-term and sustainable long-term success.
8
5.0 Conclusion
The typical project manager is obviously interested in delivering a good product to the
customer, on time and within budget. Additional considerations such as building the
technological base of the firm, creating new marketing opportunities, or even
increasing profits, are only side issues to the main effort of satisfying the customer.
Project managers must also have long-term benefits in mind. In many cases, a long
time may pass before success can be really evaluated and until long-term expectations
are met. Creating future opportunities or capabilities often makes the difference
between short-term and sustainable long-term success.
9
References
James E.T., Harvey K.H. (1989). SEI Curriculum Module, Carnegie Mellon
University.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_engineering/software_project_mana
gement.htm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_project_management
Turner, R., & Zolin, R. (2012). Forecasting success: Developing reliable scales to
predict perspectives. Project Management Journal, 43(5), 87–99.
Atkinson, R. (1999). Project management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses
and a phenomenon, it’s time to accept other success criteria, International
Journal of Project Management, 17(6), 337–342.
Shenhar, A., & Dvir, D. (2007). Reinventing project management: The diamond
approach to successful growth and innovation. Boston, MA: Harvard Business
Press.
10
Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 1
References .................................................................................................................. 10
11