Perceived causes of software project failures – An analysis of their relationships

Lehtinen, Timo; Mäntylä, Martti; Vanhanen, Jari; Itkonen, Juha; Lassenius, Casper

doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2014.01.015

Cited by 113 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…In software projects, successes (Ralph and Paul 2014) and failures (Lehtinen et al 2014) come not only in degrees but also in diverse shapes and forms. If we agree that software project success and failure is, if not a false dichotomy, at least a multidimensional spectrum, we can explore different types of successes and failures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guest editorial for special section on success and failure in software engineering

et al. 2017

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Many papers investigate success and failure of software projects from diverse perspectives, leading to a myriad of antecedents, causes, correlates, factors and predictors of success and failure. This body of research has not yet produced a solid, empirically grounded body of evidence enabling actionable practices for increasing success and avoiding failure in software projects. The need for more evidence motivates this special issue, which includes four articles that contribute to our understanding of how software project success and failure relate to topics such as: requirements engineering, user satisfaction, start-up pivots and retrospective discussions. We moreover present a brief systematic review to both situate the accepted articles in existing literature and to explore enduring methodological and conceptual challenges in this area, including developing sound instruments for measuring success, representative sampling without population lists and creating both empirically sound and practically actionable taxonomies of success antecedents.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guest editorial for special section on success and failure in software engineering

et al. 2017

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“…The target definition aims to focus the scope of the retrospective analysis on a relevant and important topic. Such topics have included the causes of software defects (Jalote and Agrawal 2005;Card 1998;Lehtinen et al 2014a), the detection of negative and positive development experiences (Schwaber and Sutherland 2011;Bjørnson et al 2009), analysis of the requirements problems (Tiedeman 1990;Jin et al 2007), lead-time problems (Lehtinen et al 2014a), installation problems (Lehtinen et al 2014a) and expectation mismatches (Lehtinen et al 2015b).…”

Section: Methods For Conducting Retrospectives In Software Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This step can be initialised by having the retrospective participants vote on the identified causes (Lehtinen et al 2014a). Voting helps steer the process of developing corrective actions in the direction of defining improvement targets that the participants perceive as being worthwhile to achieve.…”

Section: Methods For Conducting Retrospectives In Software Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…His results also include problems encountered in various process areas, including delivery, development, management and organisation. Similarly, Lehtinen et al (2014a) focused on retrospectives in four mediumsized software companies. Their findings are in line with those of Dingsøyr et al (2001) and Stålhane (2004), indicating that retrospectives can reveal problems from various software development process areas (sales & requirements, management, implementation work, etc.…”

Section: The Outcomes Of Lightweight Software Engineering Retrospectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…) and with respect to various types (cooperation, existing product, resources & schedules, etc.). Furthermore, Lehtinen et al (2014a) indicate that retrospectives can reveal perceived causal mechanisms between the detected problems interconnecting the retrospective outcomes. The outcomes from the two retrospectives introduced by Stålhane et al (2003) support this hypothesis.…”

Section: The Outcomes Of Lightweight Software Engineering Retrospectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recurring opinions or productive improvements—what agile teams actually discuss in retrospectives

2016

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Team-level retrospectives are widely used in agile and lean software development, yet little is known about what is actually discussed during retrospectives or their outcomes. In this paper, we synthesise the outcomes of sprint retrospectives in a large, distributed, agile software development organisation. This longitudinal case study analyses data from 37 teamlevel retrospectives for almost 3 years. We report the outcomes of the retrospectives, their perceived importance for process improvement and relatVed action proposals. Most discussions were related to topics close to and controllable by the team. However, the discussions might suffer from participant bias, and in cases where they are not supported by hard evidence, they might not reflect reality, but rather the sometimes strong opinions of the participants. Some discussions were related to topics that could not be resolved at the team level due to their complexity. Certain topics recurred over a long period of time, either reflecting issues that can and have been solved previously, but that recur naturally as development proceeds, or reflecting waste since they cannot be resolved or improved on by the team due to a lack of controllability or their complexity. For example, the discussion on estimation accuracy did not reflect the true situation and improving the estimates was complicated. On the other hand, discussions on the high number of known bugs recurred despite effective improvements as development proceeded.

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Challenges of gamification in software process improvement

Alhammad

Moreno

2020

J Software Evolu Process

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Software process improvement (SPI) initiatives have contributed for a long time to the progress of software development. However, the outcome of such initiatives has not always been as effective as expected. The literature of SPI points out that motivation of practitioners involved in SPI initiatives is a critical factor for its success. On the other hand, gamification has been perceived as motivational and has the potential to improve people's engagement. Thus, researchers have been recently investigating the impact of gamification in increasing the motivation and commitment of the organization members involved in SPI. Despite the novelty of the field, we see the integration of gamification and SPI as an opportunity of study and research. The aim of this paper is to investigate and report the state of the practice in this field, identifying key challenges faced by organizations wishing to incorporate gamification into their SPI initiatives. One of the main challenges identified is related to the complexity of gamifying SPI because it involves different organizational roles and aspects that may require designing different gamification strategies. Another relevant issue is the need of more empirical data to provide sound evidence about the real impact of gamification on improving SPI initiatives.

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Perceived causes of software project failures – An analysis of their relationships

Cited by 113 publications

References 50 publications

Guest editorial for special section on success and failure in software engineering

Guest editorial for special section on success and failure in software engineering

Recurring opinions or productive improvements—what agile teams actually discuss in retrospectives

Challenges of gamification in software process improvement

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