International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 106 – No.2, November 2014 9 Effect of Scope Creep in Software Projects – Its Bearing on Critical Success Factors Lakshmi Madhuri K Research & Industry Incubation Centre, Dayananda Sagar Institutions, Bangalore, India Jawahar J Rao Research &Industry Incubation Centre, Dayananda Sagar Institutions, Bangalore, India Suma V Research &Industry Incubation Centre, Dayananda Sagar Institutions, Bangalore, India ABSTRACT Quality software is developed only when project management techniques are meticulous followed. Various metrics are introduced by the industry experts to execute perfect project management. The success rate of the projects is very meek when compared to efforts and expertise of the technical experts. Various reasons pitch in the scenario when the project failure reasons are searched. Scope creep is considered as one of the important factor which influences the success of project. The influence of the scope creep on its peer factors such as time, cost, personnel, etc is also noticeable. However, Applications which are developed in the industry are categorized as critical and non critical applications. This paper presents an investigation carried out on two important domains namely health care representing critical application and retail from a non critical applications back ground. This research has proven that though there is an impact of scope creep on both the categories of applications investigation analysis indicates that the impact of scope creep on critical applications is quite noticeable than upon the other. This knowledge works enable one to formulate effective scope creep management strategy in both the domains and more specifically in critical applications. General Terms Project Scope, Scope Creep, Project Management. Keywords Software Engineering, Project Management Process, Software Quality, Scope Creep, Software Development Life Cycle. 1. INTRODUCTION Project Success and Quality Assurance is the definitive Project Success and Quality Assurance is the definitive objective of any software organization. Chaos Chronicles has declared that only 34% of IT projects developed in the Top companies are declared as successful project [3]. The reputation and success of the organization is deemed with customer satisfaction and quality project development. Hence, in the viewpoint of project success, the identification and prevention of project failure is deemed to be an important factor [4]. The strength of the company depends on the various factors such as organization maturity level, domain competency of the organization, and the project management competency such as human resource, technology development process, cost, time, scope, defect count, use case, function points etc [20]. Software Engineering Institute (SEI) proposed the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) to the software organizations which desire to develop high quality software with proper project management skills [5]. Quality assurance and standards are the part of the process which is implemented with the software certification such as CMMI [6]. In the current software industrial scenario project management has become an important part of any successful project. Project management involvement towards the project success has forced in development of various project management techniques. Software industries have witnessed a major change in the role of project management and project manager from the past decade [1]. The practices and expertise level of an organization in terms of technology development, project management and Quality Assurance are important factors of project success [6]. Human involvements as witnessed in the roles of project managers, technology developers, and quality team are also considered as important aspects of project success [7]. The important aspects to look in to the human involvement would be their skill set competency in both technical skill and soft skill, number of people involved and hands on experience of the people in both technology and domain. Technical personnel have various roles to play in the project with their effective communication and intellectual skills in managing the project activities [8]. Thus, Soft skill is very much essential for project personnel in addition to the technical skills. In the recent past human skills has an important role to play in the project management strategy [16]. Additionally, software process is further identified as one of the most important factor of the project management [2]. Projects in software industry are developed using Traditional process approach or/and Agile process approach. On the basis of the facts stated above, the factors involved in the project management can be categorized as Organization Component [OC], Human Component [HC] and Technology Component [TC][20]. The Organization Component [OC] is deemed with the factors related to the organization such as maturity model, organization standards and domain proficiency of the organization. The Human Component [HC] is formed with all the human related factors of the project such as skill set of the personnel which includes both soft skill and technical skills, experience of the developers, Number of people involved in the project. Technology Component [TC] is comprised with factors such as project domain, time allocated for the project, cost allocated for the project, software process model, technology used for the development of the project, function points, Use case, Defect Count, etc,. Project management experts have declared that the project management triangle has three vertices namely cost, time and scope [10]. Changes in the project scope demands the team to