Stakeholder dissonance

Abstract

When a project perceived to be a failure by one set of stakeholders is perceived as a success by another set of stakeholders we have outcome disagreement. Our objective is to discover if team motivation is affected when developers and managers disagree on a project"s outcome. We also investigate if culture influences team motivation. We collected questionnaire data on 290 completed projects from software engineering practitioners based in Australia, Chile, and USA. We asked if the respondent considered their project was successful and if higher level management considered the project a success. We found that more projects were perceived successful by management than by developers. Also, successful projects are associated with higher levels of team motivation than failed projects or projects with outcome disagreement. Culture makes a difference to levels of team motivation for both failed projects, and projects with outcome disagreement. An over-riding influence on team motivation is agreement with other stakeholders. To motivate practitioners, stakeholders need to agree on what constitutes a successful or a failed project before the start of the project.

Cultural Influences on Collaborative Work in Software Engineering Teams

“…Further research should also dive into the effects of culture on team motivation. [22] Furthermore, the suitability of different management styles and SE practices for different cultural indications are a promising field for future studies.…”

“…Our analysis and findings indicate that for instance cultural differences influence the success of the project [21], [22] and business goals [37]. There are many SE activities identified that are impacted by cultural aspects.…”

“…The Chilean software engineers' motivation levels show some similarities to the US software engineers" [22]. …”

“…Observed influences on SE management aspects success of the project [21], [22] business goals [30] team performance [24] quality and productivity [21], [24] the expectations on SE team member [27] expectations of management [27] control mechanisms in SE [26] risk assessment, risk mitigation and planning [25] software modeling activities [31] software testing activities [32] information sharing and organization in computer supported collaboration [28] collaborative work factors [28], [24] software process [33], [30] software engineering techniques [29] SE team member behavior information sharing [28] work organization [28], [24] team motivation [22] the expectations on management [27] communication styles [34], [12] work behaviors, act [34], [12] …”

A Management Perspective on the Failure of IS&T Projects

“…The associated ambiguity, especially as it relates to the fact that 'failure' and 'success' are not notions of contradiction (Baccarini, 1999;Fincham, 2002), makes its definition particularly problematic. The definition of project failure and its associated criteria are heavily dependent on the perceptions of stakeholders (Pereira et al, 2008;Procaccino & Verner, 2002); creating what Verner, Beecham, and Cerpa (2010) refer to as stakeholder dissonance. Traditionally, measures of project failure have been based on generic (Shokri-Ghasabeh & Kavoousi-Chabok, 2009), and quantifiable factors such as time, quality, and cost (Icmeli-Tukel & Rom, 1997), which are time dependent both within and across projects (Pinto & Prescott, 1988;Pinto & Slevin, 1988).…”