Software Development Success Reference Model - Background

What does it take to run a successful software development project? Success does not come easy, but it can be done. The industry has many success stories, and software development thought leaders have identified the key principles that lead to success. But what are the critical success factors, and what principles find common ground among the experts?

About 6 months ago, I started trying to create a set of success factors that were synthesized from the experts. I have since completely revamped my thoughts. What I ultimately want, for my own purposes, is a "Reference Model" (e.g. the OSI 7-Layer Model) that provides some structure with which I can I can think and talk about the various factors that lead to success--independent of any specific methodologies. I hope to be able to say things like "Reflection Workshops in Crystal are one technique to Continuously Learn and Optimize," or "XP provides a system for Iterative Development and Proven Practices, focused on smaller Project Teams."

I have now spent some more time thinking, and included some more popular, respected sources. The following slide is my Reference Model, a 30,000 ft. view of software success.

In future posts, I will provide more details on the individual success factors and how they relate to the work of industry luminaries. So, how did I arrive at this model? I started by taking the most important, highest-level principles and factors from the following excellent resources:

• The Standish Group's CHAOS study [CH1..9]
• The Unified Process or RUP [RUP-1..6]
• The SCRUM meta-process (web, book) [SC-1..4]
• Alistair Cockburn and Crystal methods (web, book, book) [AC-1..7]
• eXtreme Programming (web, web, book) [XP-1..5]
• My own experience on dozens of successful projects [JT-1..6]

There were several steps between extracting the critical success factors from these sources and defining my "nutshell" view, but the following slide captures the start of my reasoning. This is an "affinity diagram" that attempts to consolidate all the factors into logical groupings.



Comments are most welcome.