Successful or failed software projects have been discussed in literature for many years. Successful software projects are often defined as meeting business objectives, deliver on time and within budget, and meeting requirements. Different factors that contribute to software project success have been identified in the literature. Some of the most common factors that lead to software project success are: user involvement, management support, realistic requirements, and having good estimations. However, there are different opinions about what a successful software project is. Linberg found in a study that managers had a different perception from software practitioners (developers, testers etc.) about what a successful software project is. Since there are different perceptions of what a successful project is among different roles in software development, there may be differences from other perspectives too. This observation relates to the overall research questions in the thesis: Could there be different perceptions about what success factors are for software projects among different countries and customer-supplier relationships? Do people from different countries have different perceptions about what success factors are for software products? This study investigated if there are any differences and similarities between Swedish and Australian companies. In addition, a comparison between bespoke and market driven and bespoke and in-house customer-supplier relationships was made. The result shows that there are differences of which factors that lead to software project success among the two countries as well as between different types of customer-supplier relationships. / richard.berntssonsvensson@gmail.com

Technology push product development presents a number of challenges over the more typical market pull product development. Despite these challenges, enough advantages exist to motivate firms to develop technology push products at greater risk. Modularity is a tool that can address some of these challenges. Currently most research and application of modularity have focused on market pull product development efforts. The research in this thesis explores the value of modularity in technology push product development through the development of methods and the analysis of 68 example products including 35 technology push products. A method has been developed for quantifying the degree to which a product is market pull and technology push by applying scores derived from customer feedback. In the development of the scoring method, the meaning of the terms market pull and technology push have been explored and clarified allowing for beneficial application. The scoring method was applied to 68 example products and then statistically evaluated to determine the effect that the market pull and technology push scores have on the probability of product success. With the market pull and technology push scores as a basis for the probability of success, the effect of modularity in technology push products can be determined. The concept of technology modularity was introduced in comparison to product modularity. Each of the 35 technology push products was evaluated to determine the level of both product and technology modularity present. These levels are used to statistically evaluate the affect of modularity on the probability of product success. This research presents methods for determining if technology modularity can significantly improve the probability of product success with examples indicating its value and application. Technology modularity, and its application, is validated as an important concept for technology push product developers. Three example products are provided to illustrate the application of this research to improve product development decisions. The methods, results, and conclusions of this research provide product developers with a powerful tool to aid them in the successful development and commercialization of technology push products.

This thesis examines the process of new product development for small firms, aiming to specify what separate top performers from the rest. Every year, thousands of new products are introduced to the market. Yet, 75 % to 90 % of all products launched suffer from failure. Prevailing theory is founded on examinations on large firms, which differ significantly from small firms in terms of financial and human capital. This gives reason to suspect that prevailing theory fail to serve the specific needs of a small firm. In this study, previous research is summarized in a theoretical framework. A set of survey questions was sent out to 2,287 managers in Swedish small manufacturing firms. A research model was developed to help analyze and interpret the 156 complete responses. 32 significant variables separating top performers from the rest were acknowledged and three factor areas were specified in a framework for small firm new product success. The findings of our study indicate that prevailing theory fail to serve small firms. We conclude that small firms benefit from focusing to simplify rather than adding to refine, and that this is strongly correlated to the limited financial and human resources of a small firm.

The public sector project is particularly a demanding undertaking, with the requirement to meet diverse demands. Despite huge investment, public sector projects tend to complete behind schedule, indicating shortfall in various project factors. This research was grounded on an empirical study of the Malaysian School Computer Laboratory Programme (SCLP) to examine the project success factors throughout the project life span. The extensive SCLP was divided into six zones, spanning urban and remote environment throughout Malaysia. Its implementation was staggered into several phases, two of which covered in this study, namely phase-1 and phase-2. This research aimed to fulfil three research objectives: i) to discover the project management’s success factors; ii) to determine the product’s success factors that encompass various stakeholders; and iii) to identify project characteristics that influenced the project success. A comprehensive review of literature suggested 20 relevant project success factors to be investigated. Those factors were examined using a newly constructed framework, whereby the project life span was clustered into two segments – project process and project product. The study adopted a qualitative paradigm; nevertheless it utilised both qualitative and quantitative approaches of data collection, which were triangulated to provide a wider scope of interpretation. The quantitative data for a total sample of 357 projects were sourced from Likert-type questionnaire and secondary resources, while qualitative data were sourced from combination of semi-structured interviews with 38 respondents representing 10 groups of project stakeholders and secondary data from various documents. The results demonstrated that the project management of the SCLP was improperly administered. Out of five success factors investigated to verify the project conceptualization, only two namely project goal and project scope, were reasonably defined. One factor, stakeholder participation, was inadequately defined, while the other two factors, resources assessment and risk management, were not even taken into consideration by the project decision-making committee. There were also some deficiencies in the project planning. From six success factors tested, two were acceptably planned, i.e. project design and project costing. The other four, namely distribution of authority and responsibility, contractor selection, project scheduling, and project documentation, were insufficiently planned. The inadequacies in the project definition and project planning were reflected in the project execution as only two out of six factors, i.e. administrator effectiveness and communication, contributed to the project success. The other four, known as supervising team efficiency, contractor competence, integrity and external influences were negatively affected the project. Despite some deficiencies in the project management, the outcome or product of the project was found to be successful particularly in the judgement of the target group, the users; they were satisfied with the SCLP deliverables. They also appreciated the benefit from the utilisation of the products, which greatly changed the approaches of teaching and learning. However, the SCLP completion time was not as successful as planned, believed to be a result of unrealistic scheduling during the planning stage. Nonetheless, there were cases of genuine delays due to various factors in the earlier stages. The results also suggested that some of the project success factors were particularly influenced by project characteristics explored in this studied. The influences of these two characteristics, geographical zone and the project award method, could be seen in both the project management process and the project’s product. Overall, this thesis contributed to extant body of knowledge in various ways. A newly constructed research framework, with the concept of duality of project process and product, added depth to the longstanding idea of project success and expanded premises of the existing theory. This framework offered a better platform to identify when particular factors take place and affect the project along the project life span. This study also added a new insight to the Malaysian public sector projects management strategies in particular and to the other countries with the similar situations in general. A new paradigm in project decision-making by adopting a bottom-up concept rather than traditionally top-down alone during the project conceptualisation and a more realistic resource-based approach during the project planning, is suggested. In addition, this research proposed an ideal way to deal with various critical success factors in a huge programme.

Nous présentons un modèle de recherche qui permet d'étudier de nombreuses complexités desstratégies de lancement de nouveaux produits, de tester de façon empirique les relationshypothétiques entre les décisions de lancement, de diffuser des connaissances sur les façonsdont les managers ont tendance à élaborer diverses options de décision de lancement enstratégies de lancement génériques, et de lier le succès de nouveaux produits aux stratégiesgénériques des managers. Les données de cette recherche ont été recueillies d'octobre 2010 àjanvier 2011 au sein de l'industrie pharmaceutique iranienne. La taille de l'échantillon est de500 projets de nouveaux produits. Les répondants doivent avoir une expérience de lancementd'au moins cinq nouveaux produits, depuis janvier 2007, pour pouvoir répondre à cette étude.Nous avons demandé aux managers du marketing de sélectionner des projets de nouveauxproduits introduits après janvier 2007 par leurs entreprises, définis par celles-ci commeclairement commerciaux, et de répondre à cette enquête en fonction de l'introduction de ceproduit. Ainsi, plusieurs décisions prises par les managers lors du lancement de nouveauxproduits impliquent des choix d'options de lancement cohérents avec les choix de lancementdéjà effectués. Sur la base des données, nous identifions également trois stratégies delancement génériques, en fonction desquelles la réussite du nouveau produit eststatistiquement variable. Bien que l'ensemble de décisions, que comprend chaque stratégie, estseulement une petite portion de l'ensemble étudié, nous constatons que ces ensembles dedécisions sont associés à divers niveaux de succès. Nous étudions également les effets desréactions compétitives sur la structure de stratégie de lancement et la réussite du nouveauproduit. / We present a research model that allows the investigation of many of the complexities of newproduct launch strategies, empirically test for hypothesized relationships among launchdecisions, spread knowledge on the ways in which managers tend to build choices amonglaunch decision options into generic launch strategies and link new product success tomanagers' generic strategies. The data for this research was collected from October 2010 toJanuary 2011 in Iranian pharmaceutical industry. Sample size is 500 new product projects.XIThe respondents should have experience on launching at least five or more new product sinceJanuary 2007 in order to be qualified to answer this study. We asked marketing managers toselect new product projects introduced after January 2007 by their firms, defined by the firmsas a clear commercial and answer this survey based on the case of that product introduction.Thus, several decisions managers make in the new product launch require choosing launchdecision options consistent with already made launch choices. From the data, we also identifythree generic launch strategies across which new product success statistically varies. Althoughthe set of decisions, which comprises each strategy, is only a smaller portion of the full setinvestigated, we find that these decision sets are associated with different levels of success.We also study effects of competitive reactions on launch strategy structure and new productsuccess.