PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to classify the factors affecting the performance of software development teams and stress the soft (non‐technical) factors affecting the performance of software development teams.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on the thorough secondary research and literature review of the past empirical studies published in reputed journals. The methodology followed is the secondary research based on extensive literature review of empirical studies done and analysis of the findings of those studies and categorization of the factors affecting the software development team performance. Literature review and analysis were carried out between March 2010 and March 2011.FindingsIt was found that the soft factors such as team climate, team diversity, team innovation, team member competencies and characteristics, top management support and team leader behavior, have an effect on software development team performance. Mutual trust and communication effectiveness are found to be the prioritized factors affecting the software development team performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe conclusions made are based on the past empirical studies found in the literature. A primary research can be done by taking these soft factors into consideration and implications or observations can be found on the software development team's performance.Originality/valueThe original contribution of this paper is the classification of factors affecting the performance of software development teams. This contribution also highlights the soft factors such as team climate, which was not discussed much in the literature. It also highlights trust and communication, for example, as leading factors affecting the software development team performance.

PurposeExisting models of critical success factors of software projects have less concentration on communication, team, project management and product related factors. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of critical success factors (CSFs) for software development projects, categorize the success factors, finding the factors in each category and highlighting the product, team, project management and communication factors as important categories of success factors for software projects.Design/methodology/approachA conceptual model and seven categories of success factors comprising a total of 80 success factors for software development projects were identified based on the thorough literature review. These 80 factors are collected based on their importance to software projects and their repeated occurrence in the literature related to CSFs. Based on the occurrence of the success factor in the literature, each category comprising top five success factors are identified as critical success factors for software projects. Based on these seven categories of success factors a conceptual model was developed.FindingsA total of 35 CSFs from seven CSF categories are identified from secondary research of the CSFs for software development projects. The identified CSFs include communication in project, top management support, clear project goal, reliability of output, project planning, teamwork, project team coordination, quality control, client acceptance, accuracy of output, reduce ambiguity, maximize stability, realistic expectations and user involvement. Project management, product, team and communication factors are identified as important categories of success factors for software projects.Research limitations/implicationsDifferent categories of critical success factors such as product, project management, team and communication, which were not highlighted or categorized earlier in the literature are discussed in this current work.Practical implicationsThis research is definitely useful for organizations working on software projects. The project managers working in the industry can benefit from the mentioned critical success factors and the categories of factors by concentration on them while planning and executing software projects.Originality/valueThe conceptual model, categorization of CSFs, identifying 35 CSFs for software projects and highlighting product, team and communication factors are major contributions of this research work.

Fortune 500 organizations are executing their tasks using projects. Project management is the area of concentration across the world. Different stakeholders have a different perspective about project success. The meaning of project success had been explained in this article. In addition, the Project Critical Success Factors (CSFs) were mentioned. The research of Standish Group on project success and project success metrics was presented. Earlier research on the meaning of project success and project critical success factors was highlighted. The works of Jeffery K. Pinto and Dennis P. Slevin, David and Adam, DeLone and McLean, and The Standish Group Research were discussed in this article. The methodology included secondary research based on literature view of prominent empirical studies and the literature reviews by making note of findings and observations from those studies. The initial literature collected led to further search of articles based on their references. The research findings indicate that the top of the most success factors for many projects include project objective, top management commitment, competent project team, and user involvement.

This paper aims to find the mostly occurring reasons for conflicts in projects and mostly used techniques to resolve the conflicts. It is/was proposed a model of conflict management for projects. Total a hundred five reasons for conflicts in projects are identified from secondary research. From that top-10 reasons for conflicts in projects are founds based on number of references in the literature. Abstract management literature. Hence, this paper is a contribution in that direction describing a conceptual model of conflict management, conflict lifecycle, conflict management process, different reasons for conflicts in projects, frequently used conflict resolution techniques in projects and implementing the solution in projects. The different reasons for conflicts in projects are identified using the collected literature based on each reason and its frequency of occurrence in gathered literature. Similar technique is used to find the frequently used conflict resolution techniques in projects. These details are tabulated in [Table 1-Table 4]. They are arranged in the decreasing order of occurrence in the literature.

The iCFai university group, plot# 65, nagarjuna hills, punjagutta, hyderabad, india -500082, purna24@hotmail.com Offshore project success is very much important to both customer and the vendor. based on very less success rate of overall software projects globally, critical success factors (CsFs) for offshore software projects is gaining much importance. in the current study based on literature review, a total of 75 success factors for offshore software projects are identified. Further based on their appearance in literature 20 critical success factors from 10 CsF categories are identified. Finally top six most critical success factors for offshore software projects such as trust, efficient communication, cultural understanding, relationship between client and vendor, contract (2009), only 32% of the software projects are successful. 44% of the software projects are challenged by cost or schedule overruns and 24% of the projects are failed and did not reach the project objective. That means overall 68% of the software projects are either failed or challenged. The success rate of the software projects is relatively less to compare with other industry projects. Because of the very less percentage of success rate in software projects, Project Success became a topic of research for many researchers across the world. There are many factors such as technical factors, cultural factors, environmental, legal and social factors affecting the success of offshore software projects in offshore provider countries such as India, China, Ireland, Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Israel, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Hungary and Czech Republic. More than 50% of the Fortune 500 organizations are going for off-shoring their software projects (Hirschheim et al., 2004;Avison and Torkzadeh, 2009). GE, American Express, Walmart, and Kodak have benefited from offshoring their software projects (Avison and Torkzadeh, 2009).The business of software development is becoming global in nature (Eberlein, 2008). For example, Boeing 787 Dreamliner project brings together 50 global partners working in over 130 locations across the globe (Witthaus, 2008). Globalization and opening up of different global markets and the global dispersed nature of software work are increasing the offshore software market (Philip et al., 2010). According to McCarthy (2007), a Forrester research report, 65% of the US and European organizations have minimum of 1000 offshore project employees working for them in offshore providing countries (Philip et al., 2010). This indicates the growth of offshore industry.IT organizations are using global human resources to reduce costs and for quality (Eberlein, 2008). Usually offshore provider can be a wholly owned subsidiary, partially owned subsidiary or an entirely external service provider (Westner and Strahringer, 2008;Westner, 2009;Westner and Strahringer, 2010). According to Westner and Strahringer (2010), Offshoring happens from a physically dispersed geographical location, different time zon...