The Impact of Goals on Software Project Management: An Experimental Investigation

Abdel-Hamid, Tarek K.; Sengupta, Kishore; Swett, Clint

doi:10.2307/249488

Cited by 82 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…It is clear that the framing of decisions plays an important role in judgment and decision making [38], and that in software project environments, explicit and concrete goals play an important role in influencing preferences and behavior [39].…”

Section: B Goals and Time Horizonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intertemporal Choice: Decision Making and Time in Software Engineering

Becker

Walker

McCord

2017

2017 IEEE/ACM 10th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)

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Abstract-When making choices in software projects, engineers and other stakeholders engage in decision making that involves uncertain future outcomes. The concept of 'intertemporal choice' describes choices between outcomes at different times in the future. Short-sighted decisions with far-reaching effects are a long-standing cause of concern in the software profession.Common models to support decisions in software projects use concepts such as expected utility and discount factors to quantify future value and enable trade-off decisions. However, a growing body of behavioral research shows that these normative models do not adequately describe how people actually make choices.Our objective is to understand how developers and stakeholders actually take trade-off decisions during software projects that involve current and future benefits, and to identify the human and cooperative factors that influence them. This requires empirical research on decision making in SE with a focus on trade-offs across time. To support such research, this paper reports on a systematic literature review that aimed to identify whether the intersection of these concepts has been acknowledged and addressed. We discuss the assumptions about decision makers that underpin existing research and analyze how the role of time has been characterized in the study of decision making in SE.Based on this review, the paper begins to develop principles for a descriptive framework to characterize intertemporal choices in empirical and behavioral software engineering research.

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Section: B Goals and Time Horizonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intertemporal Choice: Decision Making and Time in Software Engineering

Becker

Walker

McCord

2017

2017 IEEE/ACM 10th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)

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“…Prior research has asked the question why many IS projects seem to take a life of their own (Mayr 2002) and continue to bind resources despite the trouble they cause (Abdel-Hamid et al 1999;Keil 1995;Keil et al 2000;Lee et al 2012). Answers to those questions were mainly rooted in psychological processes that explain biases in human decision making such as escalation of commitment to self-justify past behavior (Keil et al 2000), the sunk-cost effect (Keil et al 2000;Lee et al 2012), or the completion effect (Keil et al 2000;Lee et al 2012).…”

Section: Contribution To Is Project Escalation Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The Emergence of Formal Control Specificity in Information Systems Outsourcing: A Process-View

et al. 2014

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Information systems (IS) outsourcing projects often fail to achieve initial goals. To avoid project failure, managers need to design formal controls that meet the specific contextual demands of the project. However, the dynamic and uncertain nature of IS outsourcing projects makes it difficult to design such specific formal controls at the outset of a project. It is hence crucial to translate high-level project goals into specific formal controls during the course of a project. This study seeks to understand the underlying patterns of such translation processes. Based on a comparative case study of four outsourced software development projects, we inductively develop a process model that consists of three unique patterns. The process model shows that the performance implications of emergent controls with higher specificity depend on differences in the translation process. Specific formal controls have positive implications for goal achievement if only the stakeholder context is adapted, while they are negative for goal achievement if in the translation process tasks are unintendedly adapted. In the latter case projects incrementally drift away from their initial direction. Our findings help to better This paper is an extension of: Huber, T., Fischer, T., Kirsch, L., and Dibbern, J. (2014) understand control dynamics in IS outsourcing projects. We contribute to a process theoretic understanding of IS outsourcing governance and we derive implications for control theory and the IS project escalation literature.

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“…The gap is partly because the ERP adoption cost identification and estimation is a complex chore [4,5,10,[14][15][16][17][18][19]; it requires attentive analysis of both direct and indirect (usually hidden) costs. Moreover, the established and extensively used software cost estimation models e.g.…”

Section: Study Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…COCOMO (COnstructive COst MOdel) [20] are not adequate to an ERP setting [5, 10-12, 14, 21]. COCOMO and analogous models are primarily focused on estimating software development costs, and some of their considered cost factors might not be valid for ERP adoption projects, as lines of code (KLOC) and development time (D) are not pertinent factors in an ERP context [10,14,17,[21][22][23]. Nevertheless, these models could be relevant to ERP vendors when pricing their ERP packages.…”

Section: Study Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Back-Propagation Artificial Neural Network for ERP Adoption Cost Estimation

Kotb

Haddara

Kotb

2011

Communications in Computer and Information Science

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Abstract. Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) are greatly affected by cost escalations and overruns Reliable cost factors estimation and management is a key for the success of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems adoptions in enterprises generally and SMEs specifically. This research area is still immature and needs a considerable amount of research to seek solid and realistic cost factors estimation. Majority of research in this area targets the enhancement of estimates calculated by COCOMO family models. This research is the beginning of a series of models that would try to replace COCOMO with other models that could be more adequate and focused on ERP adoptions. This paper introduces a feedforward back propagation artificial neural network model for cost factors estimation. We comment on results, merits and limitations of the model proposed. Although the model addresses SMEs, however, it could be extended and applied in various environments and contexts.

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The Impact of Goals on Software Project Management: An Experimental Investigation

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 82 publications

References 41 publications

Intertemporal Choice: Decision Making and Time in Software Engineering

Intertemporal Choice: Decision Making and Time in Software Engineering

The Emergence of Formal Control Specificity in Information Systems Outsourcing: A Process-View

Back-Propagation Artificial Neural Network for ERP Adoption Cost Estimation

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