Software developer perceptions about software project failure: a case study

Software development project failures have become commonplace. With almost daily frequency these failures are reported in newspapers, journal articles, or popular books. These failures are defined in terms of cost and schedule over-runs, project cancellations, and lost opportunities for the organizations that embark on the difficult journey of software development. Rarely do these accounts include perspectives from the software developers that worked on these projects. This case study provides an in-depth look at software development project failure through the eyes of the software developers. The researcher used structured interviews, project documentation reviews, and survey instruments to gather a rich description of a software development project failure. The results of the study identify a large gap between how a team of software developers defined project success and the popular definition of project success. This study also revealed that a team of software developers maintained a high-level of job satisfaction despite their failure to meet schedule and cost goals of the organization. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.