Risk Factors in Software Development Projects

The increase in complexity of software development has become critical to the organizations to comprehensively identify and manage the risks involved in the software development projects. In identifying and further developing the projects, project managers must be aware of the risks or inherent risks affecting the projects. This paper presents empirical findings on the risk factors that significantly contribute to project failure. The findings demonstrate that effective communication in software project development environment was poor. The poor communication among the developers, users and project managers might be caused by lack of ability to be good listeners. The effective communication among project team is one of the most important factors in minimizing project failure. Thus, the findings and the discussion in the research could help project managers and practitioners incorporate the risk factors into their software development methodologies.