Abstract

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.

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1.0 Introduction

Software project management encompasses the knowledge, techniques, and

tools necessary to manage the development of software products (James and Harvey,
1989). Software project management is different from managing hardware-like
projects because of the different nature of software itself. Software products are
generally more complex than the hardware on which it runs. There is basically no
manufacturing process and the development process ends with delivery to the user.
Since software frequently provides the interface to the user, any frustrations with the
system tend to be focused on the software.

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.

Software project management comprises of a number of activities, which

contains planning of project, deciding scope of software product, estimation of cost in
various terms, scheduling of tasks and events, and resource management
(Tutorialspoint, 2017). According to Wikipedia (2017), the purpose of project
planning is to identify the scope of the project, estimate the work involved, and create
a project schedule. Project planning begins with requirements that define the software
to be developed. The project plan is then developed to describe the tasks that will lead
to completion. The purpose of project monitoring and control is to keep the team and
management up to date on the project's progress. If the project deviates from the plan,
then the project manager can take action to correct the problem. Project monitoring
and control involves status meetings to gather status from the team. When changes
need to be made, change control is used to keep the products up to date.

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 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

Success Dimension Measures

1. Project efficiency Meeting schedule goal

Meeting budget goal

2. Team satisfaction Team morale

Skill development
Team member growth
Team member retention

3. Impact on the customer Meeting functional performance

Meeting technical specifications
Fulfilling customer’s needs
Solving a customer’s problem
The customer is using the product
Customer satisfaction

4. Business success Commercial success

Creating a large market share

5. Preparing for the future Creating a new market

Creating a new product line
Developing a new technology

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2.0 Methodology

To gather the data for this assignment, I conducted an investigation by doing

facts finding through survey from two software project managers, Ms Priya Krishnan
from OCBC Bank (M) Bhd and Ms Grace Ong from IBM Malaysia, Cyberjaya. I
conducted face-to-face interview and handed over a set of questionnaires prepared in
classroom for them to answer. The structured questionnaires prepared involved topics
below:

 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:

 Overall project success rating

 Project success as perceived by stakeholders

 Performance against the three components of project efficiency: time, cost, and
scope.

With most studies of project success using structured questionnaires or

interviews, the results rely on participants stating how successful a project was, which
is subjective by nature (Trochim, 2006). There may be ways to measure success in

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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.

Some of the questions asked during the interview session is as below:

 How do you define project success?

 How do you ensure that your project is always on track?
 How do you close a project?
 How do you confirm that the project had achieved the objectives?
 What can you do when there are problems occurred within your development
team?
 How do you make sure resources are allocated as plan?

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3.0 Result

The two correspondence answers were assessed on various dimensions and of

their perceived of project success. Factor analysis suggests that the notion of a
successful project has five underlying dimensions. Pie chart below shows the results
obtained for the various success dimensions importance perceived by the two software
project managers from different industries; banking and IT, in which the end-product
is directed to the specific customer for banking and open market for IT. Project
efficiency deals with meeting cost, time, and scope goals while project success is
defined by meeting wider business and enterprise goals as perceived by key
stakeholders.

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.

Project Success Factors

22% 17%

Project efficiency
19% Team satisfaction
Impact on the customer
28%
Business success
14%
Preparing for the future

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 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.

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4.0 Discussion

The major factor for the successful implementation of project management is

that the project manager and team become the focal point of responsibility. The client
is responsible for the decisions and therefore has an important role in determining
success. The completion of a project requires input from a variety of groups including
the client, the project team, the parent organisation, the producer and the end user.
Each party has a role in defining and determining success. They all have specific tasks
and responsibilities that they must fulfil in order to achieve success (Kumar, 2013).
The client is expected to be the main party concerned about the success of the project
in the long term.

Project managers must be mindful to the business aspects of their company.

They can no longer avoid looking at the big picture and just concentrate on getting the
job done. They must understand the business environment and view their project as
part of the company's struggle for competitive advantage, revenues, and profit. Project
results should be seen as contributing to the wellbeing of the entire organization, and
thus managed accordingly.

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.

Management generally conceive project success using five distinct dimensions.

These dimensions are hierarchical and will be addressed differently for different
projects and different time frames. Management must specify project objectives as
early as possible and focus manager and team member attention to the expected results
from the project. Management must also look both at the short-term and the long-term
benefits of the project and judge its performance on the outcomes of all dimensions.
One must identify success measures before the project is even begun and prior to
committing organization resources to it. Managers and project teams will have to be
evaluated on the performance of all dimensions rather than only the short-term ones.

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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.

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References

James E.T., Harvey K.H. (1989). SEI Curriculum Module, Carnegie Mellon
University.

Software Project Management. Principles, process and procedures. Retrieved 16

December, 2017 from

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_engineering/software_project_mana
gement.htm.

A K Munns and B F Bjeirmi, (1996). The role of project management in achieving

project success. UK International Journal of Project Management Vol. 14(2),
81-87.

Project Management Planning. Retrieved 15 December, 2017, from

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.

Tan, T.H., Waheed, A. (2011). Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory and Job

Satisfaction in Malaysian Retail Sector. Asian Academy of Management
Journal, Vol. 16(1), 73–94.

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.

Trochim, W. (2006). Positivism and post-positivism. Research Methods Knowledge

Base.

Kumar M M and Thorpe A. Systematizing construction project evaluations. Journal of

Management in Engineering, 1996; 12; 1; 34-39.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 1

1.0 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 2

2.0 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 4

3.0 Result ................................................................................................................ 6

4.0 Discussion ......................................................................................................... 8

5.0 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 9

References .................................................................................................................. 10

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