The effects of perceived value and stakeholder satisfaction on software project impact

Abstract

In this paper we present a multiple case study on the insights of software organizations into stakeholder satisfaction and (perceived) value of their software projects. Our study is based on the notion that quantifying and qualifying project size, cost, duration, defects, and estimation accuracy needs to be done in relation with stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value. Objectives: We contrast project metrics such as cost, duration, number of defects and estimation accuracy with stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value. Method: In order to find out whether our approach is practically feasible in an industrial setting, we performed two case studies; one in a Belgian telecom company and the other in a Dutch software company. Results: In this study we evaluate 22 software projects that were delivered during one release in the Belgian telecom company, and 4 additional large software releases (representing an extension of 174% in project size) that were delivered in a Dutch software company. Eightythree (83) key stakeholders of two companies provide stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value measurements in 133 completed surveys. Conclusions: We conclude that a focus on shortening overall project duration, and improving communication and team collaboration on intermediate progress is likely to have a positive impact on stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value. Our study does not provide any evidence that steering on costs helped to improve these. As an answer to our research question-how do stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value relate to cost, duration, defects, size and estimation accuracy of software projects?-we found five takeaway messages .

Factors Affecting Cloud Infra-Service Development Lead Times: A Case Study at ING

“…To benchmark the performance of SaaS and PaaS Cloud Infra-Services within IPC to a representative set of available data, we chose to use a software development-based model, known as the Evidence-Based Software Portfolio Managementmodel (EBSPM-model) [19] [20]. The EBSPM-model focuses on benchmarking software delivery portfolios.…”

“…In order to plot each Cloud Infra-Service into the EBSPM model [19] [20], we collected three metrics: (1) lead time, (2) effort (e.g. man hours spent, cost of a delivery), and (3) functional size (the latter being included as a normalizer).…”

Communicative Competence Development As Success Factor For Specialists Of Information Technology

“…The specialist of applied information technology acts in close contact with specialists in various fields (Huijgens, Deursen & Solingen, 2017). In this case, for effective communication it is necessary to consider the language specificity of the customer, namely, to use the customer's professional thesaurus.…”

Strong agile metrics: mining log data to determine predictive power of software metrics for continuous delivery teams

“…A second threat that we take into account is the way we picked metrics to be included in the study and the choice of lagging versus leading metrics. In our actual approach we inventoried metrics in related work and existing dashboards within ING bank, and mapped these on a metrics framework that we based on previous work [8]. We realize that some systemic bias might play a role here and are looking for ways to mitigate this in a more mature approach.…”

“…Where from the 80s onwards software companies used to follow a software process improvement (SPI) approach with varying success [ In previous work we found strong effects by comparing quantitative metrics such as cost, duration, number of defects, and size with qualitative metrics like stakeholder satisfaction and perceived value [8]. A recent guest editorial by Mäntylä et al [24] mentions that, although "many papers investigate success and failure of software projects from diverse perspectives, leading to a myriad of antecedents, causes, correlates, factors and predictors of success and failure", a solid, empirically grounded body of evidence enabling actionable practices for increasing success and avoiding failure in software projects is not yet found.…”