Software engineering is the computer science discipline concerned with developing computer software. However, software engineering does not only include the technical perspective of producing software. It also involves management issues, such as planning, controlling, and monitoring a software project. A project typically embraces a structured set of activities, which are performed in a pre-determined sequence. The initial activity is generally the process of planning the project, which according to some is one of the most important and crucial efforts in order to achieve pre-defined objectives. Other states the opposite and claim that too much planning may obstruct development creativity. Current thesis explores the planning paradigm and the significance of planning efforts in the Swedish software industry. Contemporary literatures on software project planning are reviewed and presented. Moreover, the result of an empirical study, examining the relationship between project planning and project success, is presented.

The construction industry is one of the most significant industrial contributors to the economy in terms of gross product and employment. As a result, the success of a construction project is a fundamental issue to most governments, users and communities. The thesis addresses the role of the contractor in construction project success as one of the main stakeholders in the project.The research aims to study the impact of contractors’ attributes on project success from a post-construction evaluation perspective to identify what goes right and to recognise the most critical success factors (CSFs) of contractors that greatly impact on project success and link those factors to project success objectives. Initially, a literature review on construction project success was conducted to investigate the success criteria and CSFs of contractors in project success. This was followed by a survey to establish construction professionals’ perceptions of the CSFs of contractors that greatly impact on the success of construction projects.One hundred and sixty-four (164) completed surveys were returned, representing a 32% response rate. The data gathered was analysed using quantitative analysis tools (SPSS). Factor analysis reveals nine underlying clusters perceived to greatly impact the success of projects, namely: (i) health, safety and quality; (ii) past performance; (iii) environment; (iv) management and technical aspects; (v) resource; (vi) organisation; (vii) experience; (viii) size/type of previous projects; and (ix) finance.Four logistic regression and artificial neural network models were developed to predict the most important contractor factors associated with project success. The predictive ability of neural network models outperforms that of logistic models by 47.5% for scheduling model; 34.8% for budget model; 46.2% for quality model; and 46.5% for contractors’ impact model. Assuming that project success is repeatable, these findings provide a clear understanding of contractors’ performance and could potentially enhance existing knowledge of construction project success.

Project managers in the Nigerian real estate construction sector are facing challenges in delivering real estate projects profitably. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine how comprehension, motivation, skills, resources, and communication can predict project success in the real estate construction sector in Nigeria. Understanding these elements was necessary for developing project management strategies aimed at optimizing profitability. The population of the study was project management practitioners in the Nigerian real estate construction sector who are facing challenges in delivering real estate construction projects profitably. The duck alignment theory served as the theoretical framework for the study. Data collection was through a survey instrument questionnaire called the Project Implementation Profile. Multiple linear regression analysis confirmed a significant relationship between each of the 5 independent variables and the dependent variable, F(5, 70) = 216.704, p = .000, R2 = .939 upholding all the alternative hypotheses. The regression model results showed that each independent variable is a significant predictor of the dependent variable, project success at p < 0.05 and C.I. = 95% criteria. Project managers may use the findings of this study to increase the profitability of the real estate construction sector, which would translate to a business expansion resulting in an increased production of houses and housing services. The implications for positive social change may include the generation of employment for skilled and unskilled workers and the multiplier effects, which support the stimulation of sustainable economic activities in the developing economy of Nigeria.

Knowledge gained from completed information technology (IT) projects was not often shared with emerging project teams. Learning lessons from other project teams was not pursued because people lack time, do not see value in learning, fear a potentially painful process, and had concerns that sharing knowledge will hurt their career. Leaders could change the situation; however organizational leaders have not seen value in project learning and have not made it a priority. Yet, if a relationship existed among IT project success variables (PSVs) organizational learning factors (OLFs) and project learning practices (PLPs) then IT leaders may take greater interest in managing knowledge. The goal of this research was to conduct a correlational study to determine the relationship among OLFs, PLPs, and PSVs within IT organizations. OLFs included those activities at the corporate level that enabled project teams to learn from other projects. PLPs included the activities to learn lessons from a maturing or completed project. PLPs also included activities within an emerging project to harness lessons from prior projects. PSVs described project success. The research question (RQ) asked; what was the relationship among the OLFs, PLPs, and PSVs? To answer the research question it was necessary to ask four support questions (SQ). First, what elements defined organizational learning, project learning, and project success? Second, how effective was use of organizational learning? Third, how effective was project learning? Fourth, how successful were IT projects? To answer the first SQ a content analysis was conducted followed by a review with a Delphi team. A survey was then developed based on the content analysis. Finally, a statistical analysis was conducted to answer the remaining SQs and the RQ. The content analysis and Delphi team review revealed 12 OLFs, 11 PLPs, and 9 PSVs. Answering the second and third support questions the study found that OLFs and PLPs could be used more effectively within IT organizations. However, IT leaders reported that a foundation for organizational and project learning existed. Answering the fourth SQ, IT leaders reported good project success though risk management could be improved. This study found that there was a positive and significant relationship among the OLFs, PLPs, and PSVs. The relationship among the OLFs, PLPs, and PSVs suggests that there is justification to research and develop IT competence in learning.

Artikelns syfte är att öka kunskapen om kulturprojektens speciella karaktär genom att undersöka vad det önskade resultatet är och vilka faktorer som är avgörande för ett kulturprojekts framgång eller misslyckande. Studien fokuserar på värmländska kulturinstitutioner som årligen får statligt bidrag genom samverkansmodellen. Studien bygger på kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med representanter från institutionerna där de berättade om sin respektive institutions verksamhet och projekt. Empirin har sedan analyserats mot en tidigare utformad framgångsmodell av Fors och Svedberg (2015) som illustrerar framgångskriterier för kulturprojekt, för att sedan kartlägga institutionerna bild av lyckade projekt. Forskningens resultat visade att institutionernas huvudsakliga mål, och det som de hoppas på att uppnå, är produktioner och projekt av hög konstnärlig kvalité mer än ekonomisk framgång. Resultatet visade även på att kulturmålen anses mer som riktlinjer än direkta krav. / The purpose of this article is to increase the knowledge about the special characteristics of cultural projects by examining what the desired outcome is and the factors that are critical to a projects success or failure. The focus of the study is the cultural institutions in Värmland which annually receive government subsidies through the collaboration model. The study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with representatives from the institutions where they talk about their respective institutions' activities and projects. The empirical data was then analyzed against a previously designed success model by Fors and Svedberg (2015) that illustrates success factors for cultural projects, and to then identify the institutions view of successful projects. The research results showed that the institutions main objectives, and what they hope to achieve, is productions and projects of high artistic quality rather than economic gain. The result also showed that the cultural goals are considered more as guidelines than direct requirements.

The focus of this thesis is to investigate the roles of leaders, managers, and mutual roles in aligning strategy and project management (ASPM) in public sector organisations (PSOs) in developing countries (DCs). ASPM as a phenomenon has emerged to support organisations to improve the performance of their projects and fulfil their strategic objectives. In reviewing the normative literature in this area, it is evident that a limited number of studies have been conducted on ASPM, particularly studies related to PSOs in DCs, where the statistics reflect a higher percentage of failed and/or delayed projects. To the best of this author's knowledge, and having conducted a thorough review of the literature, it is believed that none of the existing research studies conducted on ASPM have explored the roles of leaders, managers, and mutual roles in ASPM in PSOs. Thus, the author asserts that it is of high importance to investigate this area within ASPM and to prepare a study that contributes by shedding light on the roles of leaders, managers, and common roles between them in ASPM in PSOs in DCs. This thesis contributes to the body of knowledge related to strategic alignment and management, project management, the public sector and leadership/management as it investigates the roles of leaders, managers, and mutual roles in ASPM in PSOs in DCs. Furthermore, this thesis presents the factors that influence leaders and managers as they carry out their individual as well as mutual roles. The proposed conceptual framework is developed and presented in Chapter 3. From a practical perspective, this thesis contributes by providing the decision makers with a tool that has been tested through multiple units in KSA government case, which may support them in improving the performance of their projects and bring benefits to organisations. In addition to that, in Chapter 5 this thesis presents some lessons learned from the pilot unit study. The author assumes that such the conceptual framework and the factors influencing the roles of managers and leaders and the mutual roles in ASPM are significant and novel and may help to improve project performance, highlighting the importance of strategy management, and ultimately improving the performance in PSOs. The author uses qualitative, interpretive, multiple unit studies research strategy to validate the proposed conceptual framework. The author found from the pilot unit study and other four units study results, present that this kind of approach contributes to more strong decisions for ASPM implementation and highlight that it is acceptable by the unit studies. In spite of the fact that these results cannot be generalised, they can allow others researcher's to link their views with the ones reported in this thesis. This thesis proposes tests and presents a novel framework for ASPM and contributes to the body of knowledge by enriching the literature. The findings from the five units study organisations reveal that the proposed framework is acceptable and clearly indicate the significance of ASPM in PSOs.

Critical success factors that contribute to project success in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have received insufficient attention in research. Guided by the goal-setting conceptual framework, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the human resource management (HRM) strategies used by owners of SMEs to achieve project success. Five owners of SMEs in St. Lucia participated in the research by contributing their experiences in using HRM strategies to achieve project success. Data were collected from SME owners using semistructured interviews, and from observations and analysis of company records. Data were manually analyzed using Yin's 5 phases. Five themes emerged from the thematic analysis of the data obtained from the interviews, observations, and company records: (a) financial rewards, (b) team meetings and briefings, (c) training and staff enhancement, (d) retention and loyalty, and (e) work-life balance. The HRM strategies used by the participants to achieve project success have implications for social change because project success can lead to the sustainability of SMEs, thereby creating employment and improving the quality of life for citizens who benefit from the successful infrastructural and social projects that owners of SMEs undertake.

Crowdfunding that is the combination word of crowdsourcing and funding makes people can start a business easily. Legislating JOBS act in US played a major role in removing restricted barriers of crowdfunding on public offerings of fence and private funds for small business. The growth speed of crowdfunding takes some beating. Through Kickstarter that is a popular crowdfunding platform and being considered the typical case of crowdfunding, 480 million dollars and more than half a billion dollars were invested in about 19 thousand and 22 projects for 2013 and 2014 respectively. But in spite of the rapid growth, the successful rate of projects at large is decreasing because of imprudent project launching. People just imagine a success story of some triumphant projects without any kind of preparedness when they launch a project. Up to now most of papers researched based on Kickstarter platform because it is the biggest crowdfunding site. But there is no research paper studying with the entire data yet. So, we gathered all the project's main pages in Kickstarter that are finished whether a project is funded or not from its launched date on 2009 to September, 2014. And we also collected all users' profile pages including initiators and backers. The goal of this research project is to analyze evolution of projects and users, investigate techniques and predict successfully funded projects and expected pledged funding levels, and providing intelligent search and discovery based on time series patterns of projects. To successfully achieve the goal, we propose to analyze all projects and users in Kickstarter toward understanding evolution of them over time and thus develop statistical models to automatically predict successfully funded projects and expected funding level. We used as many features as possible such as features being obtainable from text (project main, reward and biography description). Our result will be very helpful for people especially a person preparing a crowdfunding project to fulfill a dream.

Dr. Christenson determined that the current project critical success factors identified in the literature are necessary but not sufficient to explain all project success. He explored the construct of 'project vision' as a critical success factor impacting project success. The findings of the multiple case studies strongly suggest that a project's 'vision' is a critical success factor to successful project outcomes. As such, the projects examined represented a continuum of change projects from changes to business practices to holistic cultural change (where the desired end state was not fully known). The project vision was found to be instrumental in signalling change to all stakeholders. Similarly, the project vision was found to be critical in knowledge management projects where the purpose is to share new, best or next best practices. The research also shows that the maintenance of a project vision has significant impacts on the successful completion of the project, especially on its timeliness for completion due to enhanced decision making. A project vision needs to be a shared vision of all stakeholders and the project champion, sponsor, and manager all have a role in communicating and maintaining the project vision throughout the lifecycle of the project. A multiple case study method was conducted within a public service organization. The study's findings provide a significant contribution to the practice of project management.

<p> </p><p>One of the major advancements in the IT industry during the 1990s was the development of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Beyond the high costs and significant amount of effort needed to implement such a system, the possible benefits for the organization in achieving more efficient operations and improving its competitive stance in the competitive business environment have been undoubted.</p><p>The high failure rates of ERP systems implementations (Soh et al., 2000; Willis and Willis-Brown; 2002) have paved the way for a chase from both academicians and practitioners to understand and pinpoint the critical success factors that positively impact this type of projects’ success.</p><p>Research has been done for ERP implementations in numerous environments but there is a serious gap in the literature regarding implementations in the Cypriot context. Furthermore, after the island’s accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004, the need for the governmental sector to harmonize its systems and processes according to EU directives and to provide efficient services through transparent processes to citizens of Cyprus urged public organizations to proceed with the adoption of ERP systems to serve these purposes from both technological and business aspects.</p><p>This thesis aims to investigate the critical success factors that foster the successful rollout of ERP implementation projects in Cypriot public sector organizations. From the literature review a research proposition is devised through the development of a theoretical framework consisting of 10 critical success factors. These factors are examined in the specific project environment and their applicability and impact in successful implementations is determined.</p><p>A qualitative approach has been followed, through a multiple-case study in three Cypriot public sector organizations, by conducting a set of 9 semi-structured interviews and analyzing the results to determine the theoretical framework’s fit in the particular context and furthermore to determine the criteria which are used to determine ERP implementation success in the specific projects.</p><p>The results of the study indicate that project success is evaluated solely based on three criteria; time, cost and quality. In addition, 9 out of the 10 factors of the theoretical framework appear to be critical for implementation success.</p><p> </p>