A Closer Look at Their Constructs

Barki, Rivard and Talbot (1993) conducted a wide review of the literature with the aim of building an inventory of IS and software development project risk variables. The literature they reviewed covered both in-house development and custom-development for external clients. Their review included Boehm’s work on software project risk items (Boehm, 1989). They identified thirty-five variables, which they subsequently used as the basis for scales in a project risk-assessment instrument. In the same vein, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University published the SEI taxonomy-based risk identification instrument (Carr et al, 1993). This risk-assessment instrument contains 194 questions. Taken together, these two sources cover the ground of project risk factors in a very comprehensive way.