Software Development Failures [Electronic resources] : Anatomy of Abandoned Projects نسخه متنی

Framework of Abandonment Factors

This section builds on the analysis of the previous discussion to present a framework for organizing the factors that contribute to the abandonment of software projects. The framework developed here is primarily intended to focus attention on factors that are critical, either singularly or in conjunction with others, to the different phases of the project development life cycle. It affords project management, in particular, with a way of looking at decisions and activities associated with the project development and how they may impact the project's outcome. The factors are characterized in terms of their significant influence or impact on identifiable activities in the systems development process.

Critical factors are those scoring 6 or 7 on a seven-point scale. These are the factors considered to be of major significance in influencing the performance and outcome of an activity.

Mildly critical factors are those in the midrange—that is, 3, 4, or 5 on the above scale. These factors are judged to be of moderate significance in influencing the performance and outcome of any activity.

Less critical factors are those scoring 1 or 2 on the scale. These factors are considered to be less significant but still have some influence on an activity's performance and outcome.

The classification scheme is intended to convey a general sense of the impact a factor may have on an activity in order to motivate project management and others to pay the requisite attention to it in the course of project development. Of course, depending on the specifics of the project, a particular factor's impact may vary. For example, for a well-structured problem in a moderate-sized project, the project's goals and objectives may be unambiguous and precise such that no major disagreements can be expected. Consequently, the project's goals and objectives may not be as critical as they might otherwise be in determining the system's requirements. However, as a general proposition a project's goals and objectives should be perceived as being critical to a complete, consistent, and even realistic assessment of the requirements of the project.

Previously, we have briefly described the three major phases of the systems development process. In attempting to understand the role each abandonment factor plays in each phase of this process, we have summarized in table 3.1 the general observations (or propositions) about each factor's impact on each of the three phases. Table 3.1 shows the link between the various stages of the systems development process and the various factors identified as contributing to decisions to abandon software projects. This table illustrates the relative significance of each factor for each stage of systems development and the extent to which each may contribute to decisions to abandon a software project.