Identification of Patterns in Failure of Software Projects

Software development is not an easy job to manage, in result, many projects end in failure. It has been acknowledged that despite of all mitigation techniques, the successful completion rate of the software till 2016, by the Standish group reports remains 30-40%. With an increase in the scope and investment of the software projects, this failure rate is quite high. In outsourced projects the failure rate is even more significant. The aim of this research is to explore the fundamental reasons of software failure in outsourced and in-house software projects. We have found new patterns to identify the causes of failure in software projects. To address our research questions, systematically we identified different articles from the literature that provide the evidences for causes of failure in software. We have identified thirty-seven different risks of inhouse and thirty-nine risks of outsourced software projects.