Identifying Criteria and success Factors for Iranian Software Industry: Developing an Orange Garden Model

Software is a key element in contemporary societies for increasing the usage of information communication and technology. It is an environmentally friendly, high-growth global industry, and the most critical element of the government and business systems that every nation must build for itself. So, Software development and usage is Therefore critical. Developing nations see their software industries' growth as an opportunity to catch up to advanced nations and as a possible cure for uneven development and so they struggle to make successful software industries. In Iran, also, there is a desire to use the software capacity for development of nation; but ire country’s software capacity is limited and should be used strategically. Therefore, there is a need for policy-making and identifying the priorities. To help with this, software success factor models such as the Heeks model, the Oval model, and the Dayasindhu framework are proposed. But there is a need for a comprehensive model that express the success factors and priorities in a less abstract from, that pays attention to the domestic market as well as exports, that shows the criteria as well as for factors success, and that accepts the role of influential, but uncontrollable factors on the success of the software industry. This research, at first, is aimed at a literature review including the software industry's effects on society, success models and success factors of leading software industries of developing countries. Then, based on this literature review and in response to the question "what is the proper success (priorities) model for the Iranian software industry?" a model consisting of 6 factors (government, customer, internal structure and process, human capital, infrastructure, and environmental) was offered. After that, the model was presented to experts in 3 ways: by electronic (online and offline) and paper-based questionnaires. At last, after analyzing the data and using the orange garden as a metaphor, the final model of priorities (success factors) was derived which is called, the Orange Garden Model for the software industry.