chapter 3. The primary issue of interest is to analyze what impact the factors comprising the economic-factor category have on each stage of the systems development process and the nature and significance of that impact.How does the primary issue of cost overruns and schedule delays affect the outcome of the requirements phase of the systems development process? The three constituent issues of the economic-factor category— that is, cost overruns and schedule delays, unrealistic project goals and objectives, and changing requirements—collectively have insignificant influence on the outcome of the project's requirements at the start of the project. The only exception to this is the issue of unrealistic project goals and objectives, which in concert with other issues articulated in the socioorganizational- and technical-factor categories does exert critical influence in shaping the outcome of the project requirements. However, the influence of the goals and objectives is really limited to determining what the system must accomplish; otherwise they have virtually no impact in determining how much it will cost to produce the end product. Estimates of project costs and completion schedules are rather vague at this early stage of the development and only become clear when the design alternatives are developed and discussed. Because software is a "design know-how" activity, it is at the design stage of the systems development process that the relevant issues dealing with how to satisfy the specified requirements get aired and debated in the project team. The cost of the project and the schedule of completion are ultimately affected by the design decisions made in the course of the discussions. At that stage in the development process, the estimates of project costs and completion schedules may have some impact on what design alternatives may be found acceptable by a consensus of stakeholders and approved for implementation. Until that phase of the development process is reached, the economic factors have limited or no impact on the requirementsgathering phase; therefore, we describe their collective impact as mildly critical to the requirements.In the abandonment framework, we have described economic issues as mildly critical in influencing the outcome of the design and implementation stages of the development life cycle. The issues of cost overruns and schedule delays do not determine or contribute directly to the work of the project team during the design and implementation phases. Nevertheless, changes in requirements occurring at the design and/or implementation stages have a potential economic impact on the rest of the development process. For example, we have previously described how excessive or uncontrolled changes may significantly add to the project cost and schedule estimates. Cost overruns and schedule slippages occurring in the design and/or implementation phases may draw attention to more fundamental problems with respect to the development. Although cost overruns and schedule delays may not be the primary cause of project failure at the design or implementation stages, they may indirectly induce management to act in canceling a project if they determine that the root problems cannot be solved at an acceptable revised cost and completion schedule. The Confirm project and, to a lesser extent, DIA's BHS and the CODIS projects are illustrative of such cases of abandonment decision making. Overall we can infer from the above discussion that the issues subsumed under the economic-factor category collectively exert a mildly critical influence in determining the outcomes of the design and implementation stages of the project's development life cycle.
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