Identification of criteria and metrics for software projects performance: an outcome of interviews

Ample of research has been carried out on the topic software metrics. Lots of metrics have been projected and validated in the field of software engineering especially for software development. However, metrics that related to software project management are still need to explore more especially from the industrial or practitioners. Identification of metrics for software project management may guide the project managers to manage and control the software projects. This is indirectly may reduce the software project failures in the industrial. This paper presents the processes and activities that used to identifying the performance criteria and the related metrics that can be used to monitor the performance of software projects. The aim of this paper is to identify the performance criteria and related metrics from the perspectives of practitioners. We carried out structured interview sessions among project managers from Malaysian Public Sector to accomplish this task. The results of this study are a set of performance criteria and metrics that can be a guideline to manage and control the software projects development towards to its success