Control in Software Project Portfolios: A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach

Control in Software Project Portfolios: A Complex Adaptive Systems Approach Roger Sweetman1, Orla O’Dwyer1 and Kieran Conboy1 1

Discipline of Business Information Systems, National University of Ireland, Galway

{roger.sweetman,orla.odwyer,kieran.conboy}@nuigalway.ie

Abstract. Effective project portfolio management (PPM) can both help reverse the prevailing trend of software failure and act as a key driver of business value. Despite the importance of PPM and its success in other disciplines such as finance and new product development, it has not been studied widely in information systems with little research examining PPM in an agile context. This study proposes to address this gap by using complex adaptive systems theory as a lens to study the enactment and effectiveness of four known modes of control (behavior, outcome, clan and self) in agile software project portfolios. It proposes an interpretivist approach using exploratory case studies to investigate portfolio control in its natural context. This study will contribute to the advancement of control theory and provide new insights for theory and practice by integrating the study of PPM and control in an agile environment.

Keywords: large-scale agile software development, project management, complex adaptive systems, control, agile methods.

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portfolio

Introduction

Increasing numbers of software development teams are embracing agile principles [1, 2] to overcome the serious problem of information systems development (ISD) project failure [3, 4]. While questions about the scalability of agile methods to large scale projects and portfolios are being addressed [5, 6] considerable work remains. A workshop at XP2013 identified inter team co-ordination and large project and portfolio management as two of the most important topics for research [7]. This is supported by research that shows portfolio and program failure is almost as widespread as project failure. For example, between 40 and 60% of IT programs fail to meet budget, time and expectations and are in many cases are very much underutilized when implemented, if implemented at all [8-10]. Modern organizations are using project portfolio management (PPM) as a means to govern a set of projects that may be related by having a common objective, common client, shared resources or other interdependencies [11, 12]. PPM differs from project management in that it is about doing the right projects as opposed to doing projects right [13]. It has been estimated that 90% by value of all projects are carried out in a multi-project context [14], yet, research has focused almost solely on the management