| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 275744 | International Journal of Project Management | 2015 | 15 Pages |
•Over-requirement is a major risk in software development projects.•We investigated developers' emotional involvement as a source of over-requirement.•The experiment involved the specification of a nice-to-have software feature.•The endowment, IKEA, and I-designed-it-myself behavioral effects were manipulated.•We found that behavioral effects influence the valuation of software features.
One of the major risks associated with software development is related to the phenomenon of over-requirement. Also known as over-specification and gold-plating, over-requirement is manifested when a product or a service is specified beyond the actual needs of the customer or the market. In the software development context, we argue in this work that over-requirement is due partially to the emotional involvement of developers with the software features they specify. Similar involvement has been demonstrated for physical items as a result of the endowment, IKEA, and I-designed-it-myself behavioral effects, when people come to overvalue items they possess or self-create. To explore these behavioral effects and the interactions among them in the context of software development, we conducted an experiment in which over 200 participants were asked to specify a nice-to-have software feature. Our results confirm the existence of these behavioral effects in software development and their influence on over-requirement. The findings contribute to theory by explaining the over-requirement phenomenon and by providing insights into behavioral effects in the context of software development. Also practically relevant, the findings can alert managers of software projects to the over-requirement risk evoked by the behavioral effects explored in this study.
