The influence of the best practices of information system development on software SMEs: a research scope

The sustainable success of any organisation is strongly associated with the success of Information System (IS) projects, as ISs are considered an important component of flexibility for all kind of enterprises. Organisations are investing extensively on ISs to get the maximum benefits of Information Technology (IT) in today's competitive business set-up. Despite significant efforts to improve IS projects' success, many ISs tend to be unsuccessful most of the time. The reasons sought are the lack of alignment between IS planning and business planning, a huge divergence in the approaches adopted for the development of ISs due to time, cost and environmental factors and the ignorance of most enterprises (especially Small and Medium-sized Enterprises or SMEs) of project management practices. No method gives standards for the development of ISs in SMEs, which results in a sharp decline of the long-term performance of ISs. This paper presents the influence of the best practices of IS development and project management on IS projects, especially in software SMEs, considering a strong relation between IS success and the success of any business process.