Companies have invested large amounts of money on information systems development. Unfortunately, not all information systems developments are successful. Software project failure is frequent and lamentable. Surveys and statistical analysis results underscore the severity and scope of software project failure. Limited research relates software structure to information systems failures. Systematic study of failure provides insights into the causes of IS failure. More importantly, it contributes to better monitoring and control of projects and enhancing the likelihood of the success of management information systems. The underlining theories and literature that contribute to the construction of theoretical framework come from general systems theory, complexity theory, and failure studies. One hundred COBOL programs from a single company are used in the analysis. The program log clearly documents the date, time, and the reasons for changes to the programs. In this study the relationships among the variables of business requirements change, software complexity, program size and the error rate in each phase of software development life cycle are tested. Interpretations of the hypotheses testing are provided as well. The data shows that analysis error and design error occur more often than programming error. Measurement criteria need to be developed at each stage of the software development cycle, especially in the early stage. The quality and reliability of software can be improved continuously. The findings from this study suggest that it is imperative to develop an adaptive system that can cope with the changes to the business environment. Further, management needs to focus on processes that improve the quality of the system design stage.

Software industry is growing day by day and software is going more complex and diverse with increase in cost and rate of failure. This increase in size and complexity of software projects has negative impact on the software productivity, schedule and effort. Organizations are demanding high quality products to increase their productivity and profits. It is common that they are facing some serious problems even after spending a large sum of money. So, its alarming situation and the concerned parties should take effective steps to resolve software project failure problem. Above all this, we are facing a high rate of software failure putting software industry on stake. This study revolves around the core issue of finding the root causes of software project failure with respect to organizational factors. In this, I have tried to find the organizational factors contributing towards the failure of software projects. I have done this study with the help of literature review and questionnaire survey. There could be one or several factors responsible for the software projects failure, which are mentioned in chapter two. I have slightly touched the Information Technology for digging deep into the failure and for understanding this phenomenon. Software failure is the biggest challenge faced by IT as well as business people. There is strong need to find the root causes of software project failure and mitigate them. For controlling this failure problem management can perform its role and I have discussed the role of management in defining, measuring, controlling and implementation of software projects. A project is considered failure when it is not able to show the anticipated results and it is happened when team is not able to fulfill the requirements of the project e.g. overruns time, overruns resources, lack of conformance with initial requirements specifications. I have tried to find out the answers of my research questions through literature review and empirical study. Root causes of software project failure are presented and validated through literature review, data analysis, discussion, and findings. A comprehensive analysis of empirical data and discussion will give you the insight into the problem and my effort to sort out them in a precise way. For the purpose of knowing the solution of this study, I will refer you towards the conclusion and recommendation. The concerned or interested people can get benefit from this research study and definitely it will help them to avoid software project failure. The contribution of the research is twofold. First, it will be helpful for the software making professionals/companies and secondly, it will be helpful for decision makers/users (Organizations), when they are going to buy or implement a software project for enhancing their productivity. / This study revolves around the core issue of finding the root causes of software project failure with respect to organizational factors. In this study, I have tried to find the organizational factors contributing towards the failure of software projects. Study is comprises of literature review and questionnaire survey. There could be one or several factors responsible for the software projects failure. I have finalized some important causes of software failure on the basis of literature review and empirical study in chapter two. Further these finalized causes of software project failure are again validated with the help of questionnaire survey in chapter four. I have presented a comprehensive analysis of the gathered data from respondents. For avoiding any aspect of the analysis, I have further added a detailed discussion on data gathered through survey. I have slightly touched the Information Technology with respect to management’s role in software project development. Information Technology is playing a very vital role in today’s organizations for competing on world level. Software failure is the biggest challenge faced by IT as well as business people. In this way, software failure is very important issue for software development firms as well as buyer and user firms. There is strong need to find the root causes of software project failure and mitigate them. In currant age, the effective use of IT is a success factor for any organization. It is only possible if we link IT with organizational goals. Business and IT managers need to learn that how they can measure, manage and justify technology as a business matter. The example of ideal organization is that which gives value to the collaboration, openness, and communication. The insight gain through this research is the basis for describing the solution for software failure problem and it is presented in chapter six (Conclusion and Recommendations) briefly. The concerned parties will be able to get the benefits from this study to avoid the failure problem. The contribution of this research is twofold. First, it will be helpful for the software making professionals/companies and secondly, it will be helpful for decision makers/users (Organizations). Especially, when they are going to buy or implementing a software project for enhancing their productivity.