Pj. Guinan et al., ENABLING SOFTWARE-DEVELOPMENT TEAM PERFORMANCE DURING REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION - A BEHAVIORAL VERSUS TECHNICAL APPROACH, Information systems research, 9(2), 1998, pp. 101-125
As software development projects continue to be over budget and behind
schedule, researchers continue to look for ways to improve the likeli
hood of project success. In this research we juxtapose two different v
iews of what influences software development team performance during t
he requirements development phase. In an examination of 66 teams from
15 companies we found that team skill, managerial involvement, and lit
tle variance in team experience enable more effective team processes t
han do software development tools and methods. Further, we found that
development teams exhibit both positive and negative boundary-spanning
behaviors. Team members promote and champion their projects to the ou
tside environment, which is considered valuable by project stakeholder
s. They also, however, guard themselves from their environments; keepi
ng important information a secret from stakeholders negatively predict
s performance.