An evaluation of communications for software projects using standard project management guidelines

Abstract

Communication is very important for software project management and improper conduct of project communications could fail the software projects and it had happened to 68.4% projects in past 10 years even though there are well defined guidelines from standard bodies for training and certification. In conjunction with the growing needs and identified issues in Malaysia, software industry here also faces the same challenges therefore it is necessary to evaluate the current communications practiced in software development projects. First, the evaluation criteria were listed from literature reviews and a set of questionnaire was designed based on these criteria. Then the level of practice was examined by the criteria found from project communications management in Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the scale of competence was examined by the criteria found from personal competence on communicating in Project Manager Competency Development Framework (PMCDF). Lastly analyse the distribution of project portfolio, level of practice, and scale of competence. The survey comprised 30 software companies in Johor state, and collected response from 52 professionals who experienced in estimated 1145 software development projects. The results showed all the respondents agreed that communications will help to increase the chance of success in software development projects. However the evaluation showed the actual practices is more than half rated as not currently practicing for all the criteria in project communications management average 54.3%. Stakeholders communications involve mostly face-to-face interactions and spontaneous. There is no specific system that defines exactly how a project team should communicate. Personal competence on communicating shows the individual interpersonal skill set in handling problems solving but also reflecting the weakness in managing stakeholder expectation for consistent performance.