2013 International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST) 978-1-4799-2046-4/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 46 Software Development Project States and Project Behavior Rehan Akbar, Sohail Safdar Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Perak Campus, Kampar, Perak, Malaysia. Muhammad Aasim Qureshi Faculty of Information Technology University of Central Punjab, Lahore Pakistan. Mohd Fadzil Hassan, *Azrai Abdullah Department of Computer and Information Sciences *Department of Management and Humanities Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia. Abstract– The behavior of software development projects is a characteristic phenomenon that is difficult to study and analyze. The behavior of a software project is a true indicator of its progress and condition. Unfortunately, very less attention has been given to this important aspect of the software projects and rarely any research study has been presented in this regard. The present study addresses this limitation of existing research work and analyzes the behavior of software development projects based on the project states. Project states and their sub-states for the first time in the present study have been derived from the project lifecycle phases. The behavior of the project states have been analyzed based on the risks faced by the projects and project client factors. A case study of real projects has been conducted to validate the project states and their behavior. The project states reflect the true behavior of the software development projects and determine the status and progress of the project. Initial findings of the study have been presented in this paper which will be followed by publishing more detailed findings on the project states in upcoming paper. Keywords- Progress; Project behavior; Risks; States; I. INTRODUCTION A number of factors are involved in determining the behavior of software development projects but these factors have rarely been presented in the context of software project behavior in the existing research work. The behavior of the software development projects is a characteristic phenomena which is dependent on the factors such as risks, project client and team performance. These factors are qualitative in nature and can be analyzed through qualitative approaches. Among other factors, risks are the more critical factor that should be handled throughout the project life [1]. The existing literature focuses more on the process improvement and standardization, requirement management, risk management and project management practices. Unlike these areas, project progress, project qualitative characteristics, project behavior, condition and status have been found as the areas that require more attention and contribution from the software engineering research community. The behavior and condition of the software development projects are the characteristics which are difficult to analyze and measure due to which prediction about the progress and status of the project is difficult to make. Nevertheless, project team performance risks [2] and project client are the important factors that contribute towards the analysis and determining the behavior of the software projects. Realizing the importance of the role of project manager in risk management, the behavior of management personnel in business and IT have been well explained [3] and is further discussed in [4] and [5]. [6] has emphasized on the project managers to learn from the success and failure stories. Less attention has been paid to these aspects of the software development projects. To the best of our knowledge, rarely any software engineering research work has studied the behavior and progress of the software development projects. A number of research work such as [6], [7], [8] has been presented on the project lifecycles but this work has not developed the relationship between project lifecycle phases and behavior and progress of the software development projects. Such limitation of the existing work makes it difficult to determine the status and progress of a software project at a particular point in time. The present study addresses this limitation and studies the behavior of the software development projects, derive the project states from the project lifecycle phases and analyze their behavior based on the risk factor in the projects. A project state is referred to as the condition or status of the software project at a particular point in time. Project states are derived from the project lifecycle phases [6], [7], [8]. The project states show the real behavior of the software projects which help in determining the current state or condition of the project and project progress then can easily be determined.