Critical Factors in Software Adoption

The software engineering literature abounds with accounts of “failed” software projects, i.e., projects that came in far over schedule, and/or far over budget, or were cancelled, before completion, with the loss of significant investment. An oft-mentioned whose cause has been the subject of little or no serious study is that of shelfware, i.e., successfully completed software that is never adopted. The work described here is, to our knowledge, the first empirical study of the causes of shelfware, a study that has already resulted in the reduction of shelfware in one of the organizations studied. Our purpose is to identify and understand those factors that can lead to the non-adoption of successfully completed software, with the idea of monitoring those factors during the software development process, in order to maximize the probability of adoption – or to kill the project if adoption is judged to be unlikely.