Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences: Home

Article Title:
An Empirical Analysis of Requirements Uncertainty, Task Uncertainty and Software Project Performance
by Ping Lu, Xuemin Song, Yinqiu Song

Abstract:
Identifying user requirements is recognized as a critical step in the development of software and an important area of research. With the rapid changes of customer-driven environment, user requirements have become increasingly hard to predict and control. The team tasks of software design and development are intrinsically complex and often exacerbated by incomplete user requirements. Given all of that, requirements and task uncertainty are very important factors affecting software project performance. The main purpose of this research is to examine the relationships among requirements uncertainty, task uncertainty and software project performance, based on a questionnaire survey of 168 Chinese software development staffs. Analyzed data shows that both requirements uncertainty and task uncertainty are negatively related to software project performance. Moreover, the result shows that there is a significance positive association between requirements and task uncertainty. Findings in this research can help practitioners understand influencing factors and draw more attentions from Chinese managers, which could enhance software project performance.

Keywords: requirements uncertainty, task uncertainty, software development, product performance, process performance.

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