Challenges During the Period of Movement Control Order (MCO) Against the Success of Software Development Project Management Deliverables

Before it was declared a pandemic in March 2020, the Malaysian government was compelled to begin enforcing the MCO countrywide on 18 March 2020, and the World Health Organization classed the COVID-19 outbreak as a public health emergency. The MCO’s implementation significantly impacted the Malaysian economy, resulting in a 17.1% fall in GDP in the second quarter of 2020. Implementation of MCO during the Covid-19 pandemic has direct and indirect effects and implications on project management. This situation also may interfere with the project deliverables since project management is extremely sensitive to rapid changes. The issues that the project manager faces and how the software affects project deliverables have been examined in this study. From the standpoint of a software development project, the researcher will identify the challenges the IT project manager poses and their impact on project deliverables. In this study, we will evaluate whether implementing the MCO during the Covid-19 pandemic has given significant challenges to the IT Project Manager to successfully deliver the software development project. The literature review resulted in challenges; furthermore, the interview with three IT Managers of an ICT company in Malaysia discussed 18 challenges drawn from the analysis of the interviews. Hence, these findings of the innovative study area on software development have provided an enhanced judgment and interpretation on deciding mitigation strategies in the early stage of software development projects during the MCO.