Global Software Development Environment Research Articles

Systematic literature review on global software development based software cost estimation models and cost drivers

<p>Global software development (GSD) is a well - established discipline of software engineering that focuses on the advantage of a global environment. Effective cost estimation is critical for the success of GSD projects. Cost estimation in a GSD environment is a challenging task. As a re sult, GSD must emphasize cost estimation. Findings show that a number of researchers over the past few decades have emphasized GSD - based cost estimation in GSD; to the best of our knowledge, however, existing cost estimation have not taken into account man y GSD - based cost drivers that must be considered when estimating costs. Motivated by all this, the purpose of this study is to review the existing GSD - based cost estimation models/techniques and cost drivers that influence the accuracy of cost estimation. To identify and compile relevant research papers, a systematic literature review was carried out. From twenty - seven selected studies, initially, 86 GSD - based cost drivers and 12 GSD - based cost estimation models/techniques were extracted. After filtration, 26 cost drivers were identified as significant and to be considered in GSD - based cost estimation. This study significantly identifies GSD - based cost drivers and existing cost estimation techniques.</p>

Comparative study of SPI success factors in global and in-house environment for large-scale software companies

Background Software process improvement (SPI) is an indispensable phenomenon in the evolution of a software development company that adopts global software development (GSD) or in-house development. Several software development companies do not only adhere to in-house development but also go for the GSD paradigm. Both development approaches are of paramount significance because of their respective advantages. Many studies have been conducted to find the SPI success factors in the case of companies that opt for in-house development. Still, less attention has been paid to the SPI success factors in the case of the GSD environment for large-scale software companies. Factors that contribute to the SPI success of small as well as medium-sized companies have been identified, but large-scale companies have still been overlooked. The research aims to identify the success factors of SPI for both development approaches (GSD and in-house) in the case of large-scale software companies. Methods Two systematic literature reviews have been performed. An industrial survey has been conducted to detect additional SPI success factors for both development environments. In the subsequent step, a comparison has been made to find similar SPI success factors in both development environments. Lastly, another industrial survey is conducted to compare the common SPI success factors of GSD and in-house software development, in the case of large-scale companies, to divulge which SPI success factor carries more value in which development environment. For this reason, parametric (Pearson correlation) and non-parametric (Kendall’s Tau correlation and the Spearman correlation) tests have been performed. Results The 17 common SPI factors have been identified. The pinpointed common success factors expedite and contribute to SPI in both environments in the case of large-scale companies.

Empirical exploration of critical challenges of requirements implementation in global software development

AbstractRequirements collection is difficult and a critical phase of software development life cycle, in particular in a global software development (GSD) environment. In GSD, clients and vendors are physically separated such that there exist challenges such as lack of face‐to‐face communication, language differences, culture variation, and time zone differences. The objective of current research is to identify critical challenges of requirement engineering in GSD. There is no work done yet to empirically analyze all possible challenges via questionnaire survey from software industries. This research paper empirically investigates and analyze the identified challenges from systematic literature review (SLR) based on a questionnaire survey. For this purpose, 50 respondents from different countries are organized. From this research, 13 challenges during requirements implementation in the context of GSD have been identified previously via SLR. These challenges were then evaluated using an empirical approach of questionnaire survey. The results from respondents were analyzed based on type of respondents, level of experience of respondents, and from client–vendor perspective. Finally, the challenges were prioritized based on its frequency of occurrences from the SLR and the questionnaire survey. The relationships between the challenges and the survey results were evaluated using the Spearman's correlation coefficient. The results produced a 0.835 Spearman's correlation coefficient at significance level ρ = 0.000, which showed a strong positive correlation between the outcome of SLR and survey with no significant difference. The implication of this research work lies in both fundamental and practical perspective. The prioritized set of challenges was provided based on SLR, and questionnaire survey acts as a knowledge base for both researchers and industrial practitioners. This work will help researchers to identify challenges in GSD projects or other software engineering areas.

AGILE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE INGLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT:SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE MAPPING

In recent years, software development companies started to adopt Global Software Development (GSD) toexplore the benefits of this approach, mainly cost reduction. However, the GSD environment also brings more complexity and challenges. Some challenges are related to communication aspects like cultural differences, time zone, and language. This paper is the first step in an extensive study to understand if the software architecture can ease communication in GSD environments. We conducted a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to catalog relevant studies about software architecture and GSD teams and identify potential practices for use in the software industry. This paper’s findings contribute to the GSD body of knowledge by exploring the impact of software architecture strategy on the GSD environment. It presents hypotheses regarding the relationship between software architecture and GSD challenges, which will guide future research.

A flexible framework for requirement management (FFRM) from software architecture toward distributed agile framework

Abstract GSD is a Global software development environment where data are distributed to more than two sites. These sites may be located on national or continental borders. Every year it expands its development volume, which has become a trend for the software development business. Because of increasing demand, it has become a common type of business. The value of offshore software development has increased immensely. According to the recent predictions, one-quarter of US software-related business shifts offshore, including integration and management-related services. GSD helps explore resources from other countries, increasing knowledge and enhancing operational efficiency. Therefore, globalization has changed the development nature of software. Different organizations face several challenges, such as coordination and requirement ambiguity, during the change management process in GSD. Traceability accommodates these changes in forward and backward direction. However, it gives rise to several challenges like less client involvement because of its distributed nature and challenging to manage the requirement ambiguity due to increased cost. Therefore, the Flexible Framework for Requirement Management (FFRM) must handle the abovementioned issues.

A Conceptual Model of Factors Influencing Customer Relationship Management in Global Software Development: A Client Perspective

The software development industry or organizations increasingly emerging day by day have adopted global software development (GSD) practices due to the large significance of outsourcing. These industries face many challenges due to a lack of understanding customer perspective in the GSD environment. For any organization, the customer is the major stakeholder, and customer relationship management (CRM) plays a vital role in customer satisfaction with software development projects. These challenges create serious risks for any software development project’s success. Thus, CRM is a crucial challenge in the success of software projects in the GSD environment. This research study aims to address the factors that negatively influence CRM implementation in the global context and proposes a conceptual model based on the identified factors for enhancing software product quality. The systematic literature review (SLR) phase investigates the potential barriers to CRM implementation in GSD. Based on identified barriers, an initial conceptual model is developed. The proposed conceptual model is validated using a questionnaire survey of the GSD industry and CRM practitioners of Pakistan. Statistical analysis and several suitable tests are also performed to develop the final conceptual model for CRM implementation in the GSD environment. This research is performed from the client’s perspective. The results are promising and accommodating to avoid any software project failure due to customer-related issues in a GSD environment.

Analysis of Risk Factors in Global Software Development: A Cross-Continental Study Using Modified Firefly Algorithm.

In today's competitive world, software organizations are moving towards global software development (GSD). This became even more significant in times such as COVID-19 pandemic, where team members residing in different geographical locations and from different cultures had to work from home to carry on their tasks and responsibilities as travelling was restricted. These teams are distributed in nature and work on the same set of goals and objectives. Some of the key challenges which software practitioners face in GSD environment are cultural differences, communication issues, use of different software models, temporal and spatial distance, and risk factors. Risks can be considered as a biggest challenge of other challenges, but not many researchers have addressed risks related to time, cost, and resources. In this research paper, a comprehensive analysis of software project risk factors in GSD environment has been performed. Based on the literature review, 54 risk factors were identified in the context of software development. These were further classified by practitioners into three dimensions, i.e., time, cost, and resource. A Pareto analysis has been performed to discover the most important risk factors, which could have bad impact on software projects. Furthermore, a modified firefly algorithm has been designed and implemented to evaluate and prioritize the pertinent risk factors obtained after the Pareto analysis. All important risks have been prioritized according to the fitness values of individual risks. The top three risks are “failure to provide resources,” “cultural differences of participants,” and “inadequately trained development team members.”

Success factors analysis for requirement elicitation in global software development paradigm: An empirical study

AbstractRequirement's elicitation is the process of gathering requirements from users, customers, and stakeholders using traditional or collaborative elicitation techniques. Software requirement gathering is a challenging task particularly in a Global Software Development (GSD) paradigm due to geographical distance, limited face to face meetings, time zone differences, and language and cultural barriers. As more companies begin to adopt GSD in order to save costs, the success factors need to be identified and evaluated in order to ensure a successful elicitation process. This paper offers an in‐depth analysis on success factors for requirement elicitation within GSD environment. First, all possible success factors are identified from the literature via a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Next, these factors are evaluated by software industries via a questionnaire survey across different types and levels of experts, size of organizations, and from the client–vendor perspective. The relationships between the success factors and the survey results were evaluated using the Spearman's correlation coefficient. The results produced a 0.835 Spearman's correlation coefficient at significance level ρ = 0.000, which showed a strong positive correlation between the outcome of SLR and survey with no significant difference.

Risk Prediction by Using Artificial Neural Network in Global Software Development.

The demand for global software development is growing. The nonavailability of software experts at one place or a country is the reason for the increase in the scope of global software development. Software developers who are located in different parts of the world with diversified skills necessary for a successful completion of a project play a critical role in the field of software development. Using the skills and expertise of software developers around the world, one could get any component developed or any IT-related issue resolved. The best software skills and tools are dispersed across the globe, but to integrate these skills and tools together and make them work for solving real world problems is a challenging task. The discipline of risk management gives the alternative strategies to manage risks that the software experts are facing in today's world of competitiveness. This research is an effort to predict risks related to time, cost, and resources those are faced by distributed teams in global software development environment. To examine the relative effect of these factors, in this research, neural network approaches like Levenberg–Marquardt, Bayesian Regularization, and Scaled Conjugate Gradient have been implemented to predict the responses of risks related to project time, cost, and resources involved in global software development. Comparative analysis of these three algorithms is also performed to determine the highest accuracy algorithms. The findings of this study proved that Bayesian Regularization performed very well in terms of the MSE (validation) criterion as compared with the Levenberg–Marquardt and Scaled Conjugate Gradient approaches.

Scrum Team Competencies in Information Technology Professionals in the Global Software Development Environment

The Product Owner and Scrum Master are members of the Scrum Team, which play an essential role in Global Software Development. They must have some competencies that can overcome challenges in the global environment. This study aims to develop the competencies of these two roles and explore issues of global competencies. Researchers conducted a literature study to produce a list of competencies and in-depth interviews to explore the issues. Data processing uses content analysis and descriptive statistics. The author compiled questionnaires and generated three issues, then held a Focus Group Discussion for validation. Without reducing the nature of scrum, the consensus of experts had approved 31 competencies for the product owner while 34 for the scrum master. This research enriches scrum.org and has a global impact on improving Scrum and Global Software Development human capital and IT professionals.

Role of situational method engineering to improve visual information systems in agile distributed environment

Software product prone to continuous evolution due to increase in the use of technology. Therefore, more stakeholders are involved in software evolution increases the cost and complexity. This required optimization of resources and cost to handle evolution with Global Software Development (GSD) to utilize time zones efficiently. The significance challenge of GSD reports: time zone difference, geographical location, communication delays, knowledge sharing, control among stakeholders and development team. Because of these challenges, the requirements for development in GSD environment are also challenge as compared to on site development. Different requirement engineering methods have been used to improve the requirements analysis to deal with ambiguities and inconsistency in large set of requirements. The customization and tailoring of requirements according to changing project’s situations required to improve project development with reusing existing agile methods during requirement engineering phase. Moreover, complex information systems where heterogeneity is inevitable that implies the involvement of divergent stakeholders and necessitate a comprehensive framework to capture multidimensional viewpoints and fulfill aforementioned issues. Therefore, a situational multi-dimensional agile requirement engineering method has been proposed to support team and stakeholders’ viewpoints. The schema of the proposed method is based on challenges recognized by performing Literature Review. Then proposed method has been evaluated via experimental approach and statistical analysis conducted to validated reliability of data collected. This result is significant approved both practically and statistically that the proposed approach ease to use, implement, trained and increased productivity and performance. Hence, the experimental study for the evaluation of the proposed approach results concluded that, proposed approach is the important multimedia tool for supporting organization and distributed development team for information sharing, collaboration, product development.

Analytic Hierarchy Process Based Prioritisation and Taxonomy of Success Factors for Scaling Agile Methods in Global Software Development

Global software development (GSD) organisations are currently adopting agile frameworks in order to efficiently develop a software product. The main objective of this study is to identify the success factors (SFs), which could possibly have a positive impact on scaling agile practices in a GSD environment and develop their taxonomy based on their prioritisation using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. This study is conducted in four stages: problem identification and goal of the study (1), identification of SFs and their categorisations (2), validation of the SFs using questionnaire survey (3), and application of AHP to prioritise the SFs and develop the taxonomy of the SFs and their respective categories (4). The results of this study indicated that ‘technology’ is the most significant category as compared to the other categories of the SFs. Similarly, rich technological infrastructure is identified as a most important factor. Based on the findings of this study, authors can conclude that the contribution of this study is not only limited to development of the taxonomy of the SFs, but also their proper prioritisation by introducing AHP approach, which assists software organisations to scale agile methods effectively in the GSD environment.

A multivocal study to improve the implementation of global requirements change management process: A client‐vendor prospective

AbstractSoftware development is a complex task, and the introduction of multi‐site development teams spread across the globe makes it even harder. Requirement changes during the software development process are inevitable, and failing to manage evolving requirements is one of the contributors to project failures. Requirements change management (RCM) becomes difficult in global software development (GSD) projects due to the need to communicate and coordinate between stakeholders in a distributed environment. This research work aims to identify the factors that have positive impacts on RCM activities in GSD. We conducted a multi‐vocal literature review (MLR) and a questionnaire survey study to identify the RCM success factors. The results of the t‐test (ie, t = 0.0347 and P = .700 > .05) and correlation (rs (25) = 0.573, P = .003) indicates that there is no significant difference between the findings of MLR and the questionnaire survey. The identified factors were further analyzed in the context of client and vendor organizations to better understand the RCM success factors in both types of GSD firms. The findings of this study can provide a useful framework for tackling problems associated with RCM in a GSD environment that is significant to the progression of GSD firms.

Requirement change management challenges in GSD: An analytical hierarchy process approach

AbstractMajority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, “organizational management,” “team,” “technology,” and “process.” Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that “process” is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms.

Taxonomical classification of barriers for scaling agile methods in global software development environment using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process

Increasingly, software development organizations are scaling agile practices in the global software development (GSD) environment in order to meet the requirements of the quickly changing and regularly developing business environment. The main objectives of this study are to investigate the key barriers and develop a prioritization-based taxonomy of the barriers for scaling agile development in the GSD environment. Total twenty-two barriers were extracted from the available literature and categorized into five categories, i.e. “human resources management”, ‘coordination”, “technology”, “project management”, and “software methodology”. In the next phase, the identified barriers and their categories were further validated using the questionnaire survey. In the final phase, fuzzy-AHP method, a multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) technique, was applied to prioritize and taxonomy of identified barriers and their related categories was designed. The contribution of this study is not limited to investigate the barriers, but it also provides the roadmap to tackle the issues related to the scaling agile methods in the GSD environment.

Artificial Intelligence Based Risk Management in Global Software Development: A Proposed Architecture to Reduce Risk by Using Time, Budget and Resources Constraints

In today’s competitive world software organizations are moving towards global software development environment where experts in teams from different geographical locations and different cultures are working on their roles and responsibilities to deliver a quality and cost-effective product. These teams are distributed in nature and work on same set of goals and objectives. They are undertaking their assignments to get multiple advantages like global exposure, new software world to explore, learning environment, etc. This change is having a significant effect on marketing and distribution as well as on the way software products are perceived, designed, developed, tested, and delivered to customers. Software experts in Global Software Development environment are also facing many challenges like as well. Moreover, risk is a big challenge out of other challenges but not many researchers addressed risk related to Time, Budget and Resources. Developing software projects to address business needs and requirements is so exceedingly complex and troublesome that it is common for software projects to overrun budgets and exceed scheduled completion dates. Business managers need the whole development process streamlined and more manageable, with projected cost and timings and for better decision making. The utilization of artificial intelligence techniques to manage risk is helpful when taking care of and assessing unstructured information because of the self-learning and self-healing nature of artificial intelligence-based algorithms. In this paper an Artificial Intelligence based architecture has been proposed that reduces risk by using Time, Budget and Resource constraints that will help decision maker to take decisions and get optimal solutions.

Requirements Change Management Challenges of Global Software Development: An Empirical Investigation

The software organizations rapidly adopting global software development (GSD) to gain the economic and strategic benefits. Besides, GSD faces many challenges that mainly concerned with the requirements change management (RCM). This study aims to identify and empirically validate the factors that can negatively influence the RCM process in GSD. To this end, literature review and questionnaire survey were conducted for the investigation and validation of RCM challenges. A total of 31 RCM challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in organization types, organization size and based on experts' opinions with the aim to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges to the practitioners. Based on these identified challenges, we believe that this study can provide a framework for tackling problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to success and progression of GSD organizations.

Systematic literature review and empirical investigation of motivators for requirements change management process in global software development

AbstractMost software development firms have adopted the concepts of global software development (GSD) to develop high‐quality and low‐cost products. However, GSD is not a straightforward process. It is associated with many challenges that are mostly related to requirements change management (RCM). In this study, we explore the motivators that contribute to managing RCM activities in the GSD environment. We extracted a total of 25 motivators using the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and conducted a survey study to empirically evaluate the findings of the SLR. The results of the applied Spearman's statistical test show that the findings of the SLR and survey study had a positive moderate correlation (rs(25) = 0.566). We further analyzed the reported motivators according to organization size. Finally, we developed taxonomies of the identified motivators based on the framework proposed by Ramasubbu and the project management body of knowledge. We believe that the taxonomies provide a robust framework for tackling the challenges of RCM, which is significant for the success and evolution of GSD firms.

Investigation of the requirements change management challenges in the domain of global software development

AbstractThe phenomenon of global software development (GSD) has been adopted by a majority of the software development firms to achieve the significant benefits it offers. However, there are many challenges faced by the GSD organizations, which are mainly related to requirements change management (RCM). The key objective of this study is to identify the challenges of RCM process in GSD domain. The systematic literature review (SLR) approach has been used to investigate the challenges of RCM activities, and a total of 30 challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in the domain of client and vendor GSD organizations, aiming to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges in the context of both types of GSD organizations. The identified challenges were also categorized into three core types according to the organization size (small, medium sized, or large), which highlights the significance of each challenge for a specific organizational size. In addition, the criticality of the identified challenges was assessed using the criteria of challenges having a frequency greater than or equal to 50%. According to the findings of this study, a framework is provided that could help GSD organizations address the problems related to RCM in a GSD environment.

An Evaluation Framework for Communication and Coordination Processes in Offshore Software Development Outsourcing Relationship: Using Fuzzy Methods

Offshore Software Development Outsourcing (OSDO) is a modern business strategy for producing high quality software at low cost. OSDO refers to the practice of contracting to an offshore (extrinsic) organization to perform some or all software development work of a product. For the benefit of OSDO vendors, the present research aims to develop a “Communication and Coordination Challenges’ Mitigation Model” (CCCMM) that provides solutions for unambiguously defined communication and coordination processes in a global software development (GSD) environment. Our proposed model is based on the fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making (FMADM) approach incorporating the capability of group decision making. FMADM approach is used both in ranking of survey and assessment of case studies. Firstly, authors undertook a systematic literature review (SLR) that identified all cited challenges from a set of 101 articles. We identified eighteen problem areas faced by GSD vendors in OSDO relationships. Of these, six were ranked as critical. For the purposes of identifying corrective interventions, a second SLR was conducted that revealed 75 remedial measures extracted from 63 chosen articles. To validate our SLR findings, we surveyed 42 outsourcing experts from six countries. We also categorized six critical challenge areas and 75 corrective practices into four mitigation levels based on CMMI, SOVRM and SOPM. In addition, two case studies were conducted to evaluate CCCMM outcomes in OSDO companies. The assessment results of first case study do not recommended Company-A for successful implementation of level-2 of CCCMM, so Company-A stands at level 1. We have observed from second case study that Company-B has implemented all the critical challenges of the level-2 only; therefore Company-B is at level-2 success of the proposed assessment model.