The Influence of Management on Software Product Quality: An Empirical Study in Software Developing Companies

Abstract

This study employed grounded theory, and presents six findings describing managerial issues in the software developing companies: first, managers' technical skills, experience, and knowledge in software and domain influence the developers' productivity; second, top-down decisions deprive transparency and affect the efficiency of requirements prioritization; third, the communication between managers and customers, and realistic estimation of resources sustains good customer relationship, and have positive effect to the product quality; fourth, the aim of managers' decisions on resources is not to reduce expenditure but to achieve long-term goals for both organization and customers; fifth, the managers' choice and decisions on people affect other resources and the quality of the product, and sixth, organizational structures have influence on the teams and product quality. The findings of this study may be used to enhance managerial activities in software developing companies for better product quality. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.