An empirical investigation of the software integration success factors in GSD environment

Abstract

Global software development (GSD) is in a booming stage from the last decade with the advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Despite of the benefits gained from GSD, the developer organizations still face a lot of difficulties in integrating the software components, developed by various GSD teams, into a final product. In our previous study we identified a list of nine critical success factors (CSFs) in the software integration process for GSD vendors, using systematic literature review (SLR) method. In order to validate findings of the SLR, we conducted an empirical study using a questionnaire survey in GSD industry. The findings of our industrial survey are mostly coherent with the SLR findings. However, there is a difference in ranks of the various CSFs across the two data sets (SLR and Industrial Survey).