Identifying factors for evaluating software project proposals

Abstract

One vital aspect of software project management is the initial evaluation of project proposals. Many authors have proposed varying sets of criteria for information technology (IT) software project evaluation. There is the need to develop a common framework for evaluating software projects, based on a manageable set of criteria. In this paper, we identified 83 software project proposal evaluation variables from literature and direct interviews with project evaluators; 31 variables were extracted under ten constructs using exploratory factor analysis. Product characteristics, user characteristics and vendor experience were found to be very crucial in software project proposal evaluation. The parameters identified in this work could serve as a basis for the development of a software system for evaluating software project proposals.