Abstract:
Despite advancement in technology, software project failures remain a critical challenge
to software development community. Oftentimes, status reporting is a key control
mechanism of a software project and accurate status reporting is paramount concern to
practitioners. Empirical evidence indicates that reporting quality is positively associated
with project outcome.
The reluctance to report bad news in status reporting process in software projects is a
known problem in software project management which affects the accuracy of status
reporting. In this research, bad news refers to negative information or unfavorable
information on project status. Reluctance to report bad news is more frequent in software
projects and associated with unique features of software projects such as complexity,
changeability and invisibility. Bad news reporting in software projects has been
researched in different perspectives. However, most of the studies were conducted under
laboratory setting to control extraneous factors. To date, there have been no field studies
to explore the perceived importance of bad news reporting of the members in software
projects. This knowledge is particularly important to create a conducive environment
within software projects to facilitate bad news reporting to improve the accuracy of the
overall status reporting process.
In this study, author explored the nature of bad news reporting, focusing on interaction
between software developers and project managers in Sri Lankan Software Industry. A
field study was conducted in large and medium scale software development organizations
using a scenario based questionnaire. Sample was drawn based on disproportionate
stratified random sampling of size 93. The Results revealed that there was a significant
difference in perceived importance of bad news reporting between software developers
and project managers, and the selection of communication medium and communication
method were dependent on the bad news reporting scenario. Further, it was revealed that
selection of communication medium and communication method on reporting a particular
bad news reporting scenario were independent of each other.
