Global software development: an exploratory study of challenges of globalization, HRM practices and process improvement

Abstract

The globalization of software development industry continues to experience a significant growth. The increased trend of globalization brings new challenges, increases the scope of the core functions of human resource management and impacts the dynamics of process improvement. The aim of this study is to explore the challenges of globalization and indicators of process improvement in distributed teams’ environment. This study also explores the impact of HRM practices on challenges of global software development, and, the impact of HRM practices and challenges of global software development on process improvement. The exploratory mixed method design is adapted as research methodology for this study. In this multi-method approach, study is completed in two phases. In first phase, qualitative data is collected, and analyzed to explore the study variables and their relationships in global software development environment. In second phase, quantitative data is collected, and analyzed to validate the findings of first phase. The findings of this study suggest that the challenges of global software development negatively impact the process improvement; but, effective HRM practices help to minimize the negative impact of challenges and positively impacts the process improvement in global software development environment.