This research is designed to distinguish virtual and traditional project risks and specifically to identify the critical risks in virtual software projects. The resulting list of critical risks will provide guidance on managing risks for project leaders working in a virtual team environment. Three areas are important to the discussion of virtual software project risk: virtual software project teams, project failure and project risk. Virtual software project teams are a growing phenomenon. They are called virtual because team members are not co-located. "Virtual teams are groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks (Powell et al., 2004)". Many driving forces are causing increased dependence on these teams, including off-shoring, outsourcing, reduced business travel due to security concerns, and improvements in collaborative tools. A task force study on globalization and off-shoring indicated information technology (IT) has essentially become "a global field, business, and industry" (ACM, 2006). Therefore, there is a need to study how the unique aspects of virtual projects relate to their success. The Standish Group over the years has measured the incidence of software project failure in corporations with their well-known CHAOS reports. They conduct surveys with industry practitioners in the United States and Europe. The 2000 CHAOS report indicated 23% of projects failed while 49% were challenged (Standish Group International, 2001). The 2004 CHAOS report for the third quarter indicated 18% of projects failed and 53% of projects were challenged (Standish Group International, 2004). A one percent decrease in the number of troubled projects shows little improvement over a four years period. These numbers reinforce the need to investigate causes of project failure and identify the most critical project risks. This need is not just for projects in general, but particularly for the rapidly growing case of virtual projects. Critical project risks are those factors that will have the greatest impact on the success or failure of a project. Boehm indicates critical risks should be the main focus of a project manager, instead of the entire pool of identified risks (Boehm, 1991). Some risk management advocates are proponents of identifying and analyzing "threats to success", which allows appropriate actions to be taken to "reduce the chance of failure" (Wallace et al., 2004).
展开▼
