User Interaction, Demand Uncertainty, Personnel Conflicts And Software Project Performance Study

This thesis aims at figuring out the relationships among user-software professionals' interaction, requirements uncertainty, interpersonal conflicts and software project performance. Firstly, we deeply immersed in the literatures in related fields, as a result, we measuring the interaction levels between user and software professionals using communication levels, user engagement levels, coordination levels and partnering levels. Meanwhile, we classify requirements uncertainty into requirements instability and requirements diversity. And we also classify interpersonal conflicts into user- software professionals' conflicts and conflicts among project team members. On the basis of this, we construct a research frame including user-software professionals' interaction, requirements uncertainty, interpersonal conflicts and software project performance. Relevant research assumptions were brought forward and the main design of the research was nailed down. Software projects were regarded as research objects and the research was carried through questionnaire investigation. In the data analysis, the relationships among user-software professionals' interaction, requirements uncertainty, interpersonal conflicts and software project performance were discussed through Descriptive Analysis, Factor Analysis, Reliability Analysis, Bivariate Correlations Analysis and Linear Regression Analysis.The paper reached following conclusions: (1) Requirements uncertainty has significant negative correlations with project performance. And requirements instability and requirements diversity have both negative impact on product performance while only requirements diversity has negative impact on process performance. (2) User- software professionals' conflicts and conflicts among project team members have both significant negative correlations with project performance. But only conflicts among project team members have negative impact on product performance. (3) Good interactions between user and software professionals could reduce requirements uncertainty. (4) Requirements instability could lead to user-software professionals' conflicts and requirements diversity has significant negative correlations with conflicts among project team members. (5) Good interactions between user and software professionals could reduce user- software professionals conflicts and good communication and partnering between user and software professionals could reduce conflicts among project team members. (6) The levels of user- software professionals' interaction are important factors impacting project performance. Good user- software professionals communication, partnering, coordinating and user engagement have positive impact on project performance. Considering requirements uncertainty and interpersonal conflicts, the levels of user-software professionals' interaction are the major indicator of project performance. (7) The standardization of software development process is important and it can reduce requirements uncertainty and interpersonal conflicts while improve project performance.