The Factors that affect the selection & tailoring of software development processes

Abstract

The software industry has shown tremendous growth in Sri Lanka, and shows a lot of potential to grow further to be a dominant foreign exchange earner for the future. It is also an industry that requires less investment and provides high returns in a very short period of time. Therefore the government has shown keen interest in developing this industry and has embarked on various projects funded by foreign agencies to develop Information Technology literacy and infrastructure. However, the standards of software development varies significantly from company to company, and therefore it requires some input to make sure that we achieve some acceptable minimum which will enhance the image of the industry as a whole. The research was to find out how software process related practices are carried out in various software companies and to come up with some valuable conclusions to help software companies to get a broader view on how significant software processes are on software projects. The research was carried out taking a sample of 24 software companies that cater to local and overseas markets in a variety of disciplines in software development projects./ The sample was selected to include software companies of different sizes, catering to different markets and working on different technologies. The number of companies (24) was determined by the maximum number I could reach during the allocated six month time period. The objectives of the research were;  To identify the factors that affect the selection and tailoring of a particular process in software development projects,  To perform a correlation analysis of project successes and failures based on a particular process choice and tailoring decisions in the presence of different factors.