# Identifying Key Characteristics of Business Rules That Affect Software Project Success
## 4 Results  
The main results are presented in Tables 2 and 3. Table 2 consists of six columns, where the first column denotes research questions for which the following columns were computed. The second column specifies whether the analysis is related to low or high performing projects group. The third, fourth fifth, and sixth columns specify the number of responses of each group (N), mean of each group, standard deviation of each group, and standard error of the mean of each group, respectively. Table 3 consists of seven columns, where the first column denotes research questions for which the independent sample \(t\)-test was computed. The second and third columns present [PERSON]'s Test for Equality of Variances showing F-value (F) and significance (Sig.) for each RQ. The fourth, fifth, and sixth columns show \(t\)-test for Equality of Means results for each RQ, namely \(t\)-value (t), degrees of freedom (df) and significance (Sig.). The seventh column shows the effect size of the difference between two independent samples ([PERSON]'s delta). We compared low and high performing project groups to determine which BR characteristics (RQ1-RQ6) statistically significantly affect software implementation project success (see Tables 2 and 3 and Figure 2). The independent \(t\)-test gave us two statistically significant results. First, the second research question (RQ2), which examines if the software implementation project success is positively impacted when all business rules are specifically prepared for the project, was confirmed as having statistically significantly better responses for the group of high performers than the group of low performers. Second, the fourth research question (RQ4), which examines if the software implementation project success is positively impacted when all business rules are easy to understand, was confirmed as having statistically significantly better responses for the group of high performers than the group of low performers. Both research questions also have a medium effect size (higher than 0.5) [46]. Finally, the remaining four research questions (RQ1: Is the software implementation project success positively impacted when all business rules are in the written form? ; RQ3: Is the software implementation project success positively impacted when all business rules are consistent? ; RQ5: Is the software implementation project success positively impacted when all business rules are well-defined? ; RQ6: Is the software implementation project success positively impacted when all business rules are traceable from the business level to implementation level?) did not prove to be statistically significant. However, in all four questions, the project implementation success means of the high performers' group were higher than of the low performers' group. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Research Question** & **Project Implementation Success** & **N** & **Mean** & **Std. Deviation** & **Std. Error Mean** \\ \hline RQ1 & Low performing projects & 26 & 4.65 & 1.468 & 0.288 \\ RQ1 & High performing projects & 48 & 4.90 & 1.533 & 0.221 \\ RQ2 & Low performing projects & 26 & 3.08 & 1.468 & 0.288 \\ RQ2 & High performing projects & 48 & 4.00 & 1.701 & 0.246 \\ RQ3 & Low performing projects & 26 & 4.46 & 1.272 & 0.249 \\ RQ3 & High performing projects & 48 & 4.75 & 1.376 & 0.199 \\ RQ4 & Low performing projects & 26 & 4.58 & 1.362 & 0.267 \\  & High performing projects & 48 & 5.23 & 1.242 & 0.179 \\ RQ5 & Low performing projects & 26 & 4.73 & 1.251 & 0.245 \\  & High performing projects & 48 & 5.13 & 1.378 & 0.199 \\ RQ6 & Low performing projects & 25 & 4.36 & 1.469 & 0.294 \\  & High performing projects & 48 & 4.79 & 1.383 & 0.200 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Group statistics according to RQ.