"So Am I Dr. Frankenstein? Or Were You a Monster the Whole Time?": Mitigating Software Project Failure With Loss-Aversion-Aware Development Methodologies

TL;DR

This paper investigates how addressing psychological factors like loss aversion and fostering open communication among software engineers can significantly improve project success rates, emphasizing human-centric development methodologies.

Contribution

It introduces empirical evidence linking loss aversion mitigation and psychological safety to higher success in software projects, advocating for human-focused development practices.

Findings

Clear requirements before development increase success by 97%.

Open discussion among engineers correlates with 87% higher success.

Focus on human factors can prevent software project failures.

Abstract

Case studies have shown that software disasters snowball from technical issues to catastrophes through humans covering up problems rather than addressing them and empirical research has found the psychological safety of software engineers to discuss and address problems to be foundational to improving project success. However, the failure to do so can be attributed to psychological factors like loss aversion. We conduct a large-scale study of the experiences of 600 software engineers in the UK and USA on project success experiences. Empirical evaluation finds that approaches like ensuring clear requirements before the start of development, when loss aversion is at its lowest, correlated to 97% higher project success. The freedom of software engineers to discuss and address problems correlates with 87% higher success rates. The findings support the development of software development methodologies with a greater focus on human factors in preventing failure.