Benchmarking of software production costs: results and recommendations

This paper intends to provide a deeper understanding about the software production cost in the banking sector through a benchmarking analysis. Furthermore, the paper provides a set of recommendations to assist organizations become more efficient, productive and more competitive. This analysis was performed based on a representative sample in the Portuguese market based on a sample of 21 projects. These projects represent a total of 37.800 hours and a 2.984.000€ budget. The data collection was completed during 2 months, January and February in 2016 through different business research methods namely 15 Interviews to project managers regarding 21 projects and historical data collection. The sample went through a segmentation in two groups due to the dispersion verified among the results between some banks. These two segments were classified as "Classic Retail" - national banks of high dimension, with market recognition and influential in the Portuguese economy - and "Niche Banks"- smaller banks. Briefly, in terms of rates and considering the "Classic Retail" segment, the discrepancy of rates between the two niches is visible, the average rate of Classic Retail is 64.7% above the Niche Banks segment. In regards to productivity, The Classic Retail’s average is about 11h per unit of software produced while for the Niche segment it is about 2.6h.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Strategies to Manage Enterprise Information Technology Projects

Since 2005, most midsize company information technology (IT) projects had a 62.4% failure rate because of wrong project team communication skills or cost overruns. IT leaders expect negative IT project outcomes will cost over $2 billion by 2020. Using the actor-network theory, the purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies used by IT leaders from a midsize IT company in Washington, D.C. to plan and execute projects under budget and on time. Using purposeful sampling, 5 IT leaders were selected for this study because of their experience in implementing successful strategies for projects. Data were collected using face-to-face semistructured interviews, company documentation, and internal organizational risk reports. Yin\u27s 5-step process was used for data analysis to compile, disassemble, reassemble, interpret, and conclude the data. The interpretation of data, subjected to methodological triangulation and member checking to strengthen the dependability and credibility of the findings, yielded 3 themes of IT leader communication skills: IT leader strategy, IT leader knowledge, and implementation of cost savings. The findings indicated that IT leaders serve as the key actors in the IT project network, and leader communication skills are essential for implementing strategies for IT project completion and cost savings. With this knowledge, IT leaders can implement strategies to plan and execute projects under budget and on time. The implications for a positive social change includes the potential for IT leaders to reduce project production waste and contribute to economic expansion