Risk factors in software development projects: a systematic literature review

Risks are an inherent part of any software project. The presence of risks in environments of software development projects requires the perception so that the associated factors do not lead projects to failure. The correct identification and monitoring of these factors can be decisive for the success of software development projects and software quality. However, in practice, risk management in software development projects is still often neglected and one of the reasons is due to the lack of knowledge of risk factors that promoted a low perception of them in the environment. This paper aims to identify and to map risk factors in environments of software development projects. We conducted a systematic literature review through a database search, as well as we performed an assessment of quality of the selected studies. All this process was conducted through a research protocol. We identified 41 studies. In these works, we extracted and classified risk factors according to the software development taxonomy developed by Software Engineering Institute (SEI). In total, 148 different risk factors were categorized. The found evidences suggest that risk factors relating to software requirements are the most recurrent and cited. In addition, we highlight that the most mentioned risk factors were the lack of technical skills by the staff. Therefore, the results converged to the need for more studies on these factors as fundamental items for reduction of failure level of a software development project.