Measuring communication complexity in projects
Vyron Damasiotis, Panos Fitsilis, James O’Kane · 2012
Recent researches shows that software projects fail to meet their requirements in terms of time delay, cost overrun and quality restrictions. It is widely accepted that among the main reasons for these failures is the increased complexity of modern software projects arising from their special characteristics in comparison with projects from other domains. Software projects are affected of rapidly technological changes, are immaterial and supple. Current studies measure software project complexity by measuring either the software project product based on its attributes such as size, quality, reliability or the characteristics of software project process using attributes such as performance, stability, improvement. According to our approach these methods are not adequate as they do not focus in the software project development management process. This study, propose the managing of complexity in software projects by applying project management techniques, based on PMBOK, in software project development process and focuses on communication management. Communication management is among the most important knowledge areas in project management. Communication complexity sources that identified are project stakeholders’ properties, project environment, project communication structure, communication properties, physical and psychological barriers. A discussion exploring how these affects project communication performance is taken place. Finally for each complexity source a set of quantitative metrics and appropriate evaluation method are proposed to measure communication complexity.