Offshore Software Development Projects Research Articles

The impact of personality traits and knowledge collection behavior on programmer creativity

Context: Creativity is one of the essential ingredients in successful software engineering. However, majority of the work related to creativity in software engineering has focused on creativity in requirement engineering. Furthermore, there are very few studies that examine programmer creativity and the impact of individual and contextual factors on it. Objective: The objective of the study is to analyze the impact of the big five personality traits including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience, as well as knowledge collection behavior on a programmer's creativity intention. Method: A quantitative survey was conducted and data from 294 programmers, working in offshore software development projects, was collected. The data was later analyzed using Smart-PLS (3.0). Results and Conclusions: The results indicated that openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness and knowledge collection behavior positively predicted a programmer's creativity intention. On the other hand, neuroticism negatively predicts creativity intention of the programmer. The study also concluded that all of the independent variables, except the agreeableness trait, significantly predict creativity intention which in turn significantly predicts creativity. As a result, our conclusions indicate that programmer's personality traits and knowledge collection behavior play a key role in shaping their intention to be creative. Hence, personality traits and knowledge collection behavior should be given due attention during the hiring process of creativity-oriented software companies.

Prioritizing Management Success Factors in Offshore Software Development

A number of organizations have adopted offshore software development (OSD) practices to support their software development in terms of reducing time to market, access to technical talent and lower costs. There is a lack of understandings of the factors associated with successful management of OSD projects. The objective of this study is to identify and prioritize the factors that contribute to successful management of OSD projects. First, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify a set of factors that influence successful management of OSD projects. Second, a questionnaire survey was developed based on the findings of the SLR to collect feedback from industry practitioners. Finally, we prioritized the success factors using the analytic hierarchy process. In total, 36 success factors were identified. Findings of the study indicate that standards and procedures, change management engineering and trust building between distributed teams are key factors for the successful execution OSD projects.

Considerations for Effective Requirements Analysis in Offshore Software Development Projects: Lessons from Multi-Method Research

Considerations for Effective Requirements Analysis in Offshore Software Development Projects: Lessons from Multi-Method Research

A Review of Critical Success Factors for Offshore Software Development Projects

Abstract Offshore project success is very much important to both customer and the vendor. Based on very less success rate of overall software projects globally, critical success factors (CSFs) for offshore software projects is gaining much importance. In the current study based on literature review, a total of 75 success factors for offshore software projects are identified. Further based on their appearance in literature 20 critical success factors from 10 CSF categories are identified. Finally top six most critical success factors for offshore software projects such as trust, efficient communication, cultural understanding, relationship between client and vendor, contract type and efficient knowledge transfer are identified. The CSFs categories are prioritized in the order of importance. The important CSF categories for offshore projects found are organizational factors (both client and vendor), project factors, cultural factors and environmental factors.

A software development process for open source and open competition projects

Open source and offshore software development projects have changed the typical business model of companies. Such projects are often developed through loosely coupled teams/individuals having weak official belongings and communicating through modern communication tools instead of physical meetings. In contrast to a typical business model, project economics are not so important in project completion. In this paper we highlight the distinguished elements of such software development approaches to present guidelines for innovative software process model supporting such development paradigm.

Knowledge Sharing in Offshore Software Development: A Vendor Perspective

Increasingly, companies are outsourcing complex IT projects to offshore locations. Such globalization trend has led to challenges for both clients and vendors. The objective of this research is to enhance our understanding of offshore IS development project success from the lens of knowledge sharing. From the vendor's perspective, we investigate the mediating role played by knowledge sharing in the success of offshore software development and identify factors that contribute to knowledge sharing in offshore software development. A survey method was used to collect data in China and validate the research model. Our findings confirm that knowledge sharing mediates the impact of the use of methodology and relationship with clients on the success of offshore software development projects; particularly, knowledge sharing has more impact on process efficiency than on product quality. This study contributes to the theoretical understandings on how development methodology and vendors' relationship with clients help overcome the challenges in off shoring software development (OSD), and how knowledge sharing functions as a mediator between these factors and success of OSD. The findings also help vendors identify critical determinants of knowledge sharing in OSD and suggest strategies to execute OSD.

The Amount of Control in Offshore Software Development Projects

Prior research has focused on factors influencing the choice of controls in traditional project settings. Building on this research, this paper investigates the amount of control—defined as the variety and intensity of control mechanisms—in offshore software development projects. Using a comparative case study approach, the authors put forward eight propositions regarding the factors that influence the amount of control and its dynamics. Their results not only confirm existing findings, such as the predominance of formal controls and the negative effect of trust on the amount of formal control, but also contribute with new findings. For instance, they were able to identify particularly high levels of control in projects with high task complexity and/or high offshore team involvement as well as intensive use of formal (outcome) control in high volume and strategically important projects. The authors’ empirical findings are integrated in a conceptual model that leads to a better understanding of the antecedents of the amount of both formal and informal controls. In contrast with previous studies, their findings do not support the notion that the amount of control is directly related to project success.

Business Collaboration Support for Offshore Software Development

Offshore software development (OSD) is international business collaboration. OSD projects often encounter intercultural and inter-linguistic problems disturbing the projects. Business documents are formal media of information and knowledge for OSD. While OSD documents should convey common understanding of the OSD products, the documents may contain unsuitable expressions which draw misunderstanding of the required products and offensive issues for the collaboration. Intercultural and inter-linguistic differences cause mistakes and inappropriate expressions. OSD from Japan to China is the largest in Asia, and Japanese language is often used in OSD documents. Large similarity is found between Japanese and Chinese in their languages, while many differences exist even for the same word. The similarity induces to write unsuitable expressions for both sides of OSD. To introduce risks for OSD projects caused by unsuitable or inappropriate expressions in OSD documents, we propose to apply a proofreading system of Japanese documents for OSD. Japanese consignor uses the system to refine OSD documents written by Japanese engineers for Chinese readers, and Chinese consignee uses it to refine Japanese documents written by Chinese Engineers as derivatives of OSD projects. Effectiveness of applying the proofreading system is discussed for actual projects.

Critical Success Factors for Managing Offshore Software Development Projects

Early experiences with offshore software development (OSD) have not been consistently positive. There have been abundant media reports of various companies whose offshore projects were not able to live up to expectations. It would appear that this can be traced back to insufficient project management by the offshore project partners. In this context, some research has been carried out on the critical success factors of offshore software development projects from the perspective of U.S. clients as well as Indian and European providers. However, there is little research on these critical success factors that examines their relevance and management. This paper identifies and structures the critical success factors of offshore software development projects, and more importantly, it analyzes the relevance of the identified factors from several perspectives, such as type of company, company size, geographical location, project type, size and experience. Our findings are in particular relevant for companies in countries where English is not the first language and where OSD is still an emerging field.

Contracts in Offshore Software Development: An Empirical Analysis

We study the determinants of contract choice in offshore software development projects and examine how the choice of contract and other factors in the project affect project profits accruing to the software vendor. Using data collected on 93 offshore projects from a leading Indian software vendor, we provide evidence that specific vendor-, client-, and project-related characteristics such as requirement uncertainty, project team size, and resource shortage significantly explain contract choice in these projects. Our analysis suggests that contract choice significantly determines project profit. Additionally, some ex ante vendor-, client-, and project-related characteristics known at the time of choosing the contract continue to significantly influence project profits after controlling for contract choice. We also provide evidence to show that project duration and team size affect project profits.