Using the Fuzzy Linguistic Preference Relation Approach for Assessing the Importance of Risk Factors in a Software Development Project

This study employs fuzzy linguistic preference relation (Fuzzy LinPreRa) approach to assess the relative degree of impact of risk factors in software development project for two expert groups working in technology enterprises and software development companies. For the identified risk dimensions, the results show the same rankings for these two groups. “Organization function risk” is considered the most important dimension influencing the software development project performance, with the others, in order, being “developing technology risk,” “resources integration risk,” “personnel system risk” and “system requirement risk.” The proposed approach not only facilitates the information collecting for making pairwise comparisons, but it also eliminates the inconsistencies in the collected information.