Title: Managing Software Project Risks with the Chi-Square ([Chi]^sup 2^) Technique
Abstract: [Abstract] Regardless how much effort we put into software projects to make them succeed, many software projects have very high failure rate. The aim of this paper is to present a new technique by which we can study the impact of different control factors and different risk factors to determine software project risks. The new technique uses the chi-square test to control the risks in a software project. Fourteen risk factors and eighteen control factors were used in this paper. A group of managers was used in this study. Successful project risk management will greatly improve the probability of project success. [Keywords] Software project management; risk management, risk factors, risk controls, ChiSquare test Introduction Despite much research and progress in software project management, software development projects still fail to deliver acceptable systems on time and within budget. Much of the failure could be avoided if managers proactively planned for and dealt with risk factors rather than waiting for problems to occur and then trying to react. Project management and risk management has been proposed as a solution to preserve the quality and integrity of a project by reducing cost escalation. Due to the involvement of risk management in monitoring the success of a project, analyzing potential risks, and making decisions about what to do about potential risks, risk management is considered to be the planned control of risk. Integrating formal risk management with project management is a new phenomenon in the software engineering and product management community. It requires project managers be involved in a project from the concept phase to the product's retirement (McNair, 2001). Risk is an uncertainty that can have a negative or positive effect on meeting project objectives. Risk management is the process of identifying, analyzing, and controlling risk throughout the life of a project to meet the project objectives (Schawlbe, 2006). The goal of risk management is to preserve the quality and integrity of a project by reducing cost escalation and project slippage (Down, et al., 1994). In the process of understanding the factors that contribute to software project success, risk management is becoming increasingly important. This is a result of the size, complexity and strategic importance of many of the information systems currently being developed. In order to find the relation among risks that the software projects confront and the countermeasures that should be included to reduce risks, many researchers used different statistical methods, such as regression analysis and One-Way ANOVA. In this paper, we use the chi-square (x^sup 2^) technique that has not been used by researchers in this fashion before. A chi-square (x^sup 2^) statistical technique is used to investigate whether the distributions of categorical variables differ from one another. Chi-square tests can only be used on actual numbers and not on percentages, proportions, means, etc. There are several types of chisquare tests that can be used, depending on the way the data was collected and the hypothesis being tested. The objective of this study is to identify the risks involved in software projects in Jordanian companies, rank the risks according to their importance and occurrence frequency, and identify the activities performed by project managers to control the risks identified. The organization of this paper as will be as follows. Section two presents an overview of the literature. Section three introduces the risks relevant to the study. Section four introduces the common controls to these risks. Section five presents the empirical work. Section six concludes the article and glimpses on future work. Literature Review Freimut et al., (2001) proposed an industrial case study of implementing software risk management; the results showed that the risk method is practical, added value to the project, and that its key concepts are understood and usable in practice. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 3
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