DOI: 10.7763/IJCTE.2016.V8.1035
Soft Skills for Software Project Team Members
Abstract—Software development usually occurs in the
context of software project management (SPM). An often cited
challenge in the area of software project management is the
high failure rate of software development projects (SPDs). One
of the factors contributing to the failure of SDPs is the lack of
soft issues, also known as soft skills or human aspects. The
main purpose of this research was to identify and categorise
the soft skills that facilitate the delivery of successful SDPs. To
this end a survey was conducted in the form of a questionnaire
as the research instrument. The results of the survey
underwent a quantitative analysis and it was found that a
variety of soft skills are important in facilitating the delivery of
successful SDPs. Although a wide range of soft skills were
identified, not all soft skills can be considered to be of crucial
or equal importance.
Index Terms—Soft skills, software development projects,
software project failure.
The authors are with University of South Africa, South Africa (e-mail:
mtswees@unisa.ac.za).
Cite:Emmanuel S. Mtsweni, Tertia Hörne, and John Andrew van der Poll, "Soft Skills for Software Project Team Members," International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 150-155, 2016.