The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

11-2015

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Engineering: M.E.M

Department

Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

College

College of Science and Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Hiral Shah

Second Advisor

Dr. Ben Baliga

Third Advisor

Dr. Balasubramanian Kasi

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Keywords and Subject Headings

Software, Scrum, Agile, Snowball

Abstract

Software is created with programming languages and related utilities, which may come in several forms. For a software project to be successful it is essential that the project is completed on time and within the estimated budget, with all features and functions as originally specified. However due to various reasons these software projects fail some even get cancelled before they even get completed. Because of this, the projects can be categorized into Successful projects, challenged projects and Failed projects. The failure is caused mainly because of cost overrun or time overrun or because the product was not delivered with all the requirements as per initial specification. The cost of these failures and overruns are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The lost opportunity costs are not measurable, but could easily be in the trillions of dollars. Hence it is important that detailed work be done on these to overcome the huge costs they incur. This research work is focused on analyzing the factors that cause software project time overruns and to provide recommendation to overcome or mitigate the effect of some of the identified factors on software project. The project employs systematic, formal and descriptive research techniques. This study is based on the data collected through structured questionnaire and in-depth, unstructured and informal interview with key personnel. The sampling technique used is snowball sample technique. Since the research topic is highly qualitative in nature, we are prompted to use simple percentages so as to make the data more succinct.

Comments/Acknowledgements

I express my immense gratitude to Dr. Hiral Shah. She has been my mentor and guide and her continuous encouragement and valuable suggestions helped me at every stage of this project. I am grateful to Dr. Ben Baliga for his comments and encouragement at various phases of this project. I would also like to thank Prof. Gary Nierengarten and Dr. Balsy Kasi for reviewing my project.

I also extend my gratitude to all individuals and organizations for their prompt and timely help and guidance in completing the project.

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