¹Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, Oslo, Norway.
²Simula Research Laboratory and University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

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Abstract—Each year the public sector invests large amounts of money in the development and modification of their software systems. These investments are not always successful and many public sector software projects fail to deliver the expected benefits. Goal. This study aims at reducing the waste of resources on failed software projects through better understanding of the success factors and challenges. Method. We collected information about project characteristics, project outcome, perceived success factors, challenges and lessons learned from 35 software projects in 11 organizations in the public sector of Norway. Results. The respondents experienced that extensive involvement and competence of the client, high priority of the project, good dialogue between the clients and the external supplier and application of agile practices were main success factors. The main challenges were related to the involvement and competence of the client, project planning and management, software architecture and integration issues, transition of the product to the user organization and benefit management. Small and large software projects reported different challenges, especially related to project priority and access to skilled personnel. Projects with time and materials contracts with suppliers and that involved clients during project execution were more successful than other projects. Conclusions. Success factors are usually human factors, e.g., involvement, competence and collaboration. Challenges tend to be due to human factors as well as issues of a technical nature. Both aspects need to be addressed to enable successful software projects and avoid failures.

Index Terms—Agile, empirical study, public sector, software projects, success factors.

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Cite: Parastoo Mohagheghi, Magne Jørgensen, "What Contributes to the Success of IT Projects? An Empirical Study of IT Projects in the Norwegian Public Sector," Journal of Software vol. 12, no. 9, pp. 751-758, 2017.