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Published in:
2011 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
What Happens Before a Project Starts?—Project Start-up from the Supplier Perspective
Authors : Paula Savolainen, June M. Verner, Lesley P. W. Land, Graham C. Low
Published in: Information Systems Development
Publisher: Springer New York
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Abstract
Before an outsourced software project officially begins the contracting or supplier organization has already expended effort. Although project start and start-up effort impact on project success in most cases these are undefined concepts. There are no clear definitions of project start, start-up or the activities that should be completed before project start either in the literature or in practice. Ambiguity around project start sets up risks to the profitability of a project and therefore makes the real success of a project not only uncertain but difficult to measure. A vague project start also makes comparisons between projects and between organizations unreliable. In this paper, we describe a pilot study that reviews project start, project start-up, and project start date, and then investigates what the key activities of the supplier are normally performed by the end of the project start-up phase. We use interviews with software supplier practitioners to define those key activities.