Assessment of why software projects fail in government organization in Ethiopia

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Date

2017-02

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Publisher

A.A.U

Abstract

In a country like Ethiopia, where information and communication systems are in the early stage of development, software projects may face several challenges. Software projects may suffer from schedule or budget overrun or unmet specifications, leading to failure. This paper aims at assessing the major factors that can lead to software project failure in government organizations in Ethiopia. This research used quantitative and qualitative methods. Factors affecting software projects failure are identified based on extensive literature review. The quantitative aspect of the study involved 48 practitioners and end users from government organizations and 24 from software companies. In the qualitative study, direct interviews were used to collect data from 4 senior IT managers in the government organizations. The quantitative data were analyzed by employing appropriate techniques of descriptive statistics using SPSS and MS-Excel software tool. The qualitative data were analyzed using the techniques of open codding. The result of the study indicated that the major factors for the failure of software project in government organization are lack of ICT department as well as user involvement in software projects and lack of knowledge management. Lack of top management support and Lack of skilled ICT professionals and end users are also the major reason for the failure of software projects. In addition, the result revealed loss of confidence by stakeholders was major effects of software project failure. It is recommended that engaging ICT professionals as well as users in the whole course of the project and capacity building for end users and ICT professionals is important to minimize failure of software projects in government organizations and there is also need to gain confidence of stakeholders by increasing the success rate of software projects. Furthermore, long term strategy for knowledge management in the area of software project management is also important.

Description

A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of Addis Ababa University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Master Of Science in Information Science

Keywords

Practitioners, Software projects, Software projects failure

Citation