The Dimensions of Software Engineering Success. Free Essay

The chosen article for this research analysis is on “The Dimensions of Software Engineering Success” by Ralph and Kelly. The statement of previous authors is that new software engineering technology can be rated by its quality, the success of the project, and the success of information systems. The success entails the quality of the project from the implementation stage to the maintenance stage. Previous research has only focused on the process of software engineering success (Ralph & Kelly, 2014). However, there is little research to ascertain the broad dimensions of success that software engineering (SE) would cover. The previous SE practitioners have only defined success in a simple way without a conceptual definition of the unique aspects of such success. Therefore, the article tries to fill this gap by elaborating on the dimensions of software engineering success.

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The article hence identifies the eleven dimensions that may be used to evaluate the success of software engineering. The eleven themes include feedback, time, emotion, project, client, design, analysis, designer, work, winning, and parts. The first theme is the project which rates SE success by the organization of software into smaller projects (Ralph & Kelly, 2014). A good project should also be associated with the client. Another dimension is the time during which a project has to be completed and for a specific price. The design of the SE project should be pleasing to the developers and the users. The developers should also build a good working relationship with the management to ascertain the success of SE. The emotions of the major stakeholders when an SE project is presented to them is another key determinant of success. As for the stakeholder feedback, it is not a dimension but a primary indicator of success. The work done by the project design has to be analyzed to determine the overall success of a project. The analysis of success is considered as important as the parts or components of the project. Lastly, the article found winning as the lowest of the eleven themes in determining the success of an SE project (Ralph & Kelly, 2014). The key dimensions are the project client, time, design and work.

Proposed Solution

Ralph and Kelly found the information on the eleven themes to be insufficient in determining the success of SE. Therefore, the two authors further proposed that the main and broad dimensions of success are the project efficiency, the stakeholders, the market performance, the quality of artefacts, and the time. In total, there are only five main broad dimensions of SE success. The stakeholders include all individuals who are affected by the SE project (Ralph & Kelly, 2014). Such include the management team, the developers, customers, designers, and the general public. The efficiency of a project is defined by the number of resources used and how such resources meet the project goal, objectives, and budget. The quality of an artefact is determined by its usage, simplicity, cohesion, and coupling. The performance of an artefact in the market should be in terms of its likelihood to be adopted by other firms. It is also the uniqueness of the project that defeats other software in the market. Lastly, a project is not successful until a catastrophe hits (Ralph & Kelly, 2014). Therefore, time is the dimension that will tell projects success for its ability to withstand a crisis. Therefore, this research disguised the previous research that had indicated SES to be a simple and over-rational aspect of a project. Therefore, it is recommended that all aspects of technology have to be considered in SES and its impact on those involved. A project is good if its impact on the users and developers leads to the success of a company.

Reference

Ralph, P., & Kelly, P. (2014, May). The dimensions of software engineering success. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 24-35). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2568225.2568261