Leading to the Success: Assessing the Impact of Leadership Skill of Project Managers on Success of A Software Project

Abstract

Software projects are getting complex and dynamic in the current global scenario and consequently understanding the factors which affect the success of such complex projects becomes critical. The impact of leadership styles of the project managers on the success of the software projects is considered for this study. This study compares the differences in the impact generated by task-oriented leadership, relation-oriented leadership, change-oriented leadership, and boundary-spanning leadership on the success of the software project. ANOVA was applied to compare the difference among the four leadership styles exhibited by project manager in bringing success to the software project. The result of the study shows that Task Behaviors, Relation Behaviors, Change Behaviors, and Boundary-spanning Behaviors aspects of leadership exhibited by project manager are significantly different from each other. The mean of relationship behavior is significantly different from that of other three-task behavior, change behavior, and boundary spanning behavior, the mean of task behavior is significantly different from that of change and boundary spanning behaviors and the mean of change and boundary spanning behavior is not significantly different from each other. The data were collected from 150 respondents, the size of data can be increased for better result. Thus the result of the study emphasizes the use of people skill by the project manager.

Keywords: Software Project Success, Leadership Quality, Task Behaviours, Relation Behaviours, Change Behaviours and Boundary-Spanning Behaviours

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