In-house software development: what project management practices lead to success?

Project management is an important part of software development, both for organizations that rely on third-party software development and for those whose software is developed primarily in-house. Moreover, quantitative survey-based research regarding software development's early, nontechnical aspects is lacking. To help provide a project management perspective for managers responsible for in-house software development, we conducted a survey in an attempt to determine the factors that lead to successful projects. We chose a survey because of its simplicity and because we hoped to find relationships among variables. Also, a survey let us cover more projects at a lower cost than would an equivalent number of interviews or a series of case studies. Our results provide general guidance for business and project managers to help ensure that their projects succeed.