Software Development Outsourcing Research Articles

Design of PBOM and SBOM Supporting the Management of License for Outsourced Software Development and Project

Design of PBOM and SBOM Supporting the Management of License for Outsourced Software Development and Project

A First Look into Software Security Practices in Bangladesh

Software security practices are critical in minimizing vulnerabilities and protecting unauthorized access to the code and the system. However, software security practices outside Western countries need to be better understood. This need for understanding security practices is further necessitated by the increased outsourcing of software development that can result in vulnerabilities on a global scale. This article addresses this gap, focusing on Bangladesh, a country that represents a booming software industry in the Global South. In this study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 developers to understand their security perceptions and identify the factors influencing software security practices in Bangladesh. Our findings unpack how security fits in the local software development life cycle and shed light on the challenges deterring security practices in Bangladesh. Based on our results, we provide recommendations for developing situated and sustainable strategies to support software security practices in the local context.

Decision Making of Agile Patterns in Offshore Software Development Outsourcing: A Fuzzy Logic-Based Analysis

Computation intelligence techniques are important for making decisions in an agile-based offshore software development paradigm. Offshore development faces additional challenges, such as trust, communication and coordination, and socio-cultural and knowledge transfer. There is a need to determine the rankings of challenges considering their criticality concerning practitioners working in agile-based offshore software development. This paper aims to identify and rank agile challenges in offshore software development by applying computational intelligence techniques. From the systematic literature review, we identified 30 communication and coordination challenges. The distributed agile pattern catalog consists of 15 patterns, from which eight were used to solve communication and collaboration challenges. Many researchers have used fuzzy logic to quantify their results. We further applied the fuzzy analytical technique to determine the priority order concerning the criticality of the identified agile pattern catalog. The results showed that Central Code Repository Pattern ranked the most significant for solving communication and coordination challenges. Global Scrum Board Pattern and Synchronous Communication Pattern ranked second.

Offshoring software development: india/china choice a transaction costs perspective

The purpose of this paper is to interpret the decision to choose a country to entrust its service providers with the software development activity. Based on transaction cost theory, the cost measurement waxes derived from this theory are used to compare two competing countries in the Offshore market: India and China. Salary, ICT, language, trust and economic and institutional stability are the points of differentiation on which this study is based. By using an exploratory and a comparative study based on secondary data from different statistical sources, the study confirms that according to the TCT, India remains a more appropriate choice than China for client firms seeking to outsource software development activity. This paper is completely original and proposes a new research component that links TCT predictions with the country chosen as a part of Offshore’s strategy.

Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing Process Model Validation: A Case Study Approach

The successful execution and management of Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing (OSMO) can be very beneficial for OSMO vendors and the OSMO client. Although a lot of research on software outsourcing is going on, most of the existing literature on offshore outsourcing deals with the outsourcing of software development only. Several frameworks have been developed focusing on guiding software system managers concerning offshore software outsourcing. However, none of these studies delivered comprehensive guidelines for managing the whole process of OSMO. There is a considerable lack of research working on managing OSMO from a vendor’s perspective. Therefore, to find the best practices for managing an OSMO process, it is necessary to further investigate such complex and multifaceted phenomena from the vendor’s perspective. This study validated the preliminary OSMO process model via a case study research approach. The results showed that the OSMO process model is applicable in an industrial setting with few changes. The industrial data collected during the case study enabled this paper to extend the preliminary OSMO process model. The refined version of the OSMO process model has four major phases including (i) Project Assessment, (ii) SLA (iii) Execution, and (iv) Risk.

AHP-Based Systematic Approach to Analyzing and Evaluating Critical Success Factors and Practices for Component-Based Outsourcing Software Development

Component-based software development (CBSD) is a difficult method for creating complicated products or systems. In CBSD, multiple components are used to construct software or a product. A complex system or program can be created with CBSD quickly and with money while maintaining excellent quality and security. On the other hand, this research will persuade outsourced vendor companies to embrace CBSD approaches for component software development. We conducted a systemic literature review (SLR) to investigate the success factors that have a favorable impact on software outsourcing vendors’ organizations, and we selected 91 relevant research publications by creating a search string based on the study questions. This useful information was compiled using Google Scholar, IEEE Explore, MDPI, WILLEY Digital Library, and Elsevier. Furthermore, we completed all of the procedures in SLR for the full literature review, including the formulation of the SLR protocol, initial and final data collection, retrieval, assessment processes, and data synthesis. Among the ten (10) critical success factors we identified are a well-trained and skilled team, proper component selection, use of design standards, well-defined architecture, well-defined analysis and testing, well-defined integration, quality assurance, good organization of documentation, and well-organized security, and proper certification. Furthermore, the proposed SLR includes 46 best practices for these critical success factors, which could assist vendor organizations in enhancing critical success factors for CBOSD. According to our findings, the discovered success factors are similar and distinct across different periods, continents, databases, and approaches. The recommended SLR will also assist software vendor organizations in implementing the CBSD idea. We used the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method to prioritize and analyze the success factors of component-based outsourcing software development and the result of different equations of the AHP approach to construct the pairwise comparison matrix. The largest eigenvalue was 3.096 and the CR value was 0.082, which is less than 0.1, and thus sufficient and acceptable.

Towards dealing with commonly occurring requirements engineering process issues during software development outsourcing.

Due to specific advantages, the volume of Software Development Outsourcing (SDO) is rapidly increasing. Because of challenges arising from the Requirements Engineering (RE) process, the anticipated benefits of SDO are not achieved in case of several projects. The objective of this research work is to recommend RE practices for addressing the commonly arising RE process issues in the case of SDO. For this reason, a thorough literature review has been undertaken, as well as two questionnaire surveys have been performed with skilled SDO industry practitioners. The surveys have been done by utilizing semi-supervised style and employing Convenience Sampling method. The 50 percent rule and a four-point Likert Scale have also been used to determine the advantages of RE practices for dealing with the issues. A comprehensive list of 147 RE practices has been extracted by conducting a Focus Group session. Furthermore, the 147 RE practices have been ranked by applying Numerical Assignment and Hundred Dollar Techniques during two Focus Group sessions. The detection and adaptation of RE practices aids in enhancing the SDO RE process, evading SDO failures, and achieving the associated SDO advantages.

Model to Cope With Requirements Engineering Issues for Software Development Outsourcing

The anticipated benefits of Software Development Outsourcing (SDO) are not achieved in case of several projects because of the issues that emanate from Requirements Engineering (RE) process. This research work presents a Requirements Engineering Practices (REP) model to cope with the customarily occurring issues of the RE process for SDO. To formulate the model, five workshops have been conducted and Root Cause Analysis has been performed by considering 43 commonly occurring SDO RE process issues, and 147 RE practices to tackle the issues. To discover the root causes for commonly transpiring issues, 5- Whys technique has been employed. The relevant RE practices that can be used to deal with the root causes, have been endorsed by applying Brainstorming technique. For the 43 frequently occurring issues, 89 root causes have been discovered. Afterwards, 124 relevant RE practices have been recommended to eradicate the root causes and hence to address the corresponding issues. Thus, REP model postulates the root causes for commonly occurring issues of the SDO RE process, maps the root causes to the relevant best RE practices to address the corresponding issues. The model has been evaluated by an expert panel and evaluation results have been analysed through Inter-Rater Reliability analysis and Analysis of Means. The REP model supports the RE process for SDO by i). evading the adoption of random and inappropriate RE practices for dealing with the common issues of the process, ii) helping to attain the expected benefits of SDO.

Problems, Solutions, and Success Factors in the openMDM User-Led Open Source Consortium

Open-source software (OSS) development offers organizations an alternative to purchasing proprietary software or commissioning custom software. In one form of OSS development, organizations develop the software they need in collaboration with other organizations. If the software is used by the organizations to operate their business, such collaborations can lead to what we call “user-led open-source consortia” or “user-led OSS consortia”. Although this concept is not new, there have been few studies of user-led OSS consortia. The studies that examined user-led OSS consortia did so through the lens of OSS, but not from the inter-company collaboration perspective. User-led OSS consortia are a distinct phenomenon that share elements of inter-company collaboration, outsourcing software development, and vendor-led OSS development and cannot be understood by using only a single lens. To close this gap, we present problems and solutions in inter-company collaboration, outsourcing, and OSS literature, and present the results of a single-case study. We focus on problems in the early phases of a user-led open-source consortium, the openMDM consortium, and the solutions applied to these problems. Furthermore, we present the factors which lead this consortium to sustained growth.

Barriers of managing cloud outsource software development projects: a multivocal study

Management of COSD projects is a challenging task due to number of distant development locations in different time zones, client and vendor organizations, different cloud deployment models and range of different service level agreements. The objective of this study is to identify the barriers associated with managing COSD projects. We implemented a Multivocal Literature Review to identify barriers that influence management of COSD projects. We identified 21 COSD management barriers from 165 primary studies. The comparison between the barriers identified from formal and grey literature indicate that there are similarities between the barriers investigated from both types of literature. Moreover, client-vendor analysis shows that there is no significant difference between COSD management barriers associated with both types of organizations. We believe that the study findings will assist both research and industry community to better understand and manage COSD projects.

A field experiment on trialsourcing and the effect of contract types on outsourced software development

To ensure the success of software projects, it is essential to select skilled developers and to use suitable work contracts. This study tests two hypotheses: (i) the use of work-sample testing (trialsourcing) improves the selection of skilled software developers; and (ii) the use of contracts based on hourly payment leads to better software project outcomes than fixed-price contracts. Fifty-seven software freelancers with relevant experience and good evaluation scores from previous clients were invited to complete a two-hour long trialsourcing task to qualify for a software development project. Thirty-six developers completed the trialsourcing task with acceptable performance, and, based on a stratified random allocation process, were asked to give a proposal based on an hourly payment or a fixed-price contract. Eight hourly payment-based and eight fixed-priced proposals were accepted. The process and product characteristics of the completion of these 16 projects were collected and analysed. While the use of trialsourcing may have prevented the selection of developers with insufficient skills, the performance on the trialsourcing task of the selected developers did, to a large extent, not predict their performance on the projects. The use of hourly payments seems to have led to lower costs than fixed-price contracts, but not to improved processes or products. We plan to follow up these results with research on how to design more skill-predictive trialsourcing tasks, and when and why different project contexts give different contract consequences.

Quadruple Factors Interference and Its Effects on Quality of Outsourcing Testing: A Case Study

The share of IT companies in the global market has been increasing and many organizations are moving to outsource their software development projects to off-shore vendors. Recently, the IT sector in Palestine has been gaining much ground with many software development companies specializing in software development outsourcing services. Maintaining high-quality and robust software products has always been a key success factor in the outsourcing sector. Software testing is considered to be the main phase in which teams can assure high quality of software products.Therefore, we did an exploratory multiple-case study and this study involvesfour Palestinian software outsourcing companiesof different domain. We provide insights about factors that affect the quality of software testing practice, and explore applied testing techniques, methods and confronted challenges. The results reveal that there is big attention toward software testing assoftware development companies are investing more effort, time, and technical resources into their quality assurance teams. Additionally, among the applied software testing methods, more attention needs to be directed towards test automation. Moreover, more theoretical and technical courses targeting software quality assurance should be included in national Palestinian universities’ curriculum. Finally, we propose a new model that can help practitioners to enhance the quality of their outsourced software products

The contract-type choice for short-term software development outsourcing: The role of behaviour-based formal control

With this article, we contribute to the recent debate regarding the role of transaction cost economics in IT outsourcing and software development outsourcing research. Our focus is on the contract-type choice for short-term software development outsourcing. For this purpose, we critically examine transaction cost economics and the extant IT outsourcing/software development outsourcing literature and propose a framework which classifies software development outsourcing transactions according to transaction frequency and transaction investment characteristics. The framework identifies short-term software development outsourcing as an occasional, idiosyncratic transaction. Based on this groundwork, we clarify the concept of short-term contract and put forward that such a transaction is governed by a short-term contract. Following transaction cost economics and control theory, our resulting theoretical considerations infer that for short-term software development outsourcing, the vendor’s high human asset specificity and the resulting behaviour-based outcome control, the monitoring of the developer staff, are the triggers for contract-type decisions. Accordingly, staff monitoring by the client should result in Time & Material contracts, whereas staff monitoring by the vendor should result in Fixed Price contracts. We develop corresponding hypotheses which we test with 468 specific contract records for short-term software development outsourcing. The results confirm the transaction cost economics–based recommendations for contract-type choice. We therefore conclude that the advice of the transaction cost economics to use certain governance structures according to transaction attributes is also applicable to IT outsourcing/software development outsourcing transactions. We suggest further exploration of specific contract records to substantiate our results.

Freelancing Models for Fostering Innovation and Problem Solving in Software Startups: An Empirical Comparative Study

Context: freelancers and startups could provide each other with promising opportunities that lead to mutual growth, by improving software development metrics, such as cost, time, and quality. Niche skills processed by freelancers could help startups reduce uncertainties associated with developments and markets, with the ability to quickly address market issues (and with higher quality). This requires the associations between freelancers and startup to be long-term, based on trust, and promising agreements driven by motivations (leading to the growth of both parties). Freelancers could help startups foster innovations and undertake software development tasks in better ways than conducted in-house, if they are selected using informed decision-making. Objectives: the paper has three objectives, (1) to explore the strategies of startups to outsource software development tasks to freelancers (termed as freelancing association strategies); (2) to identify challenges in such outsourcings; and (3) to identify the impacts of outsourcing tasks to freelancers on overall project metrics. The overall objective is to understand the strategies for involving freelancers in the software development process, throughout the startup lifecycle, and the associated challenges and the impacts that help to foster innovation (to maintain competitive advantages). Method: this paper performs empirical studies through case studies of three software startups located in Italy, France, and India, followed by a survey of 54 freelancers. The results are analyzed and compared in the identification of association models, issues, challenges, and reported results arising because of such associations. The case study results are validated using members checking with the research participants, which shows a higher level of result agreements. Results: the results indicate that the freelancer association strategy is task based, panel based, or a hybrid. The associations are constrained by issues such as deciding pricing, setting deadlines, difficulty in getting good freelancers, quality issues with software artefacts, and efforts to access freelancer work submissions for reward. The associations have a positive impact on software development if there is availability of good freelancers (which lasts long for various tasks). The paper finally provides a freelancing model framework and recommends activities that could result in making the situation beneficial to both parties, and streamline such associations. Fostering innovation in startups is, thus, a trade-off situation, which is limited and supported by many conflicting parameters.

Factors influencing the requirements engineering process in offshore software development outsourcing environments

Offshore software development outsourcing (OSDO) is one of the popular development paradigms in the software industry. There are a number of challenges associated with OSDO including the challenges related to requirements engineering (RE) process. The objective of this study is to identify success factors (SFs) associated with RE processes in the OSDO context. A total of 25 SFs were identified using systematic literature review (SLR) and the identified SFs were further validated with practitioners using a questionnaire-based survey. The authors also examined the identified RE challenges with respect to their relevance for different organisation types (client and vendor) and sizes (small, medium, and large) with an aim to provide a clear understanding of the RE process and its SFs in the context of various OSDO organisations. They also conducted a comparative analysis between the SLR and questionnaire findings and the results indicate that there is a moderately positive correlation between the data sets. They believe that the findings of this study will provide a comprehensive model to help OSDO organisations assess and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their RE activities.

Critical Barriers in Software Outsourcing Vendor Organizations and Their Impacts on Software Outsourcing Clients: A Systematic Literature Review

Globalization and technological advancement have driven up the demand for software as many enterprises seek to gain a competitive edge through efficient business operations. Whereas software provides this capacity, the resources involved in software development sometimes provide a stumbling block, especially for startups and smaller businesses. Software development outsourcing or offshore software development offers a viable alternative for these enterprises. Software development outsourcing is a contractual agreement between a client and vendor organization (s), who then provide part or all of the software development related services at an agreed fee paid by the client. Despite the apparent importance of offshore software development, there is limited research literature that explores the general practices in software development outsourcing. Besides, identifying barriers that often present a significant challenge for client organizations has received a little interest from researchers. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of 68 research articles to identify the critical barriers for offshore software development outsourcing vendors. In order to increase the internal validity of the reported findings, the articles selected for the review were taken from three continents; Africa, Asia and Europe. The critical barriers established from the study included communication problems, cultural barriers and incompatibility with the client’s requirements. From the findings, it is recommended that vendors address these barriers for an improved relationship between themselves and the clients. Moreover, addressing these barriers offer the vendors with an opportunity to position themselves strategically within the offshore outsourcing industry. Furthermore, the findings provide meaningful literature in the continuum of Software Development Outsourcing for Software project managers, researchers and other participants in the field. More importantly, the presented literature offers a starting point for generalizing the reported findings within the context of Software Development Outsourcing.

Prioritization based Taxonomy of Cloud-based Outsource Software Development Challenges: Fuzzy AHP analysis

Cloud-Based Outsource Software Development (COSD) is a new methodology adopted by organizations to develop software using teams of knowledge workers located across the globe using cloud computing services. However, there is a lack of understanding of challenges associated with successful execution of COSD projects. The objective of this study is to identify and prioritize the challenges that influence COSD projects. First, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and identified 21 challenges that impact COSD projects. Next, a questionnaire survey was developed based on the SLR findings to collect feedback from industry practitioners. Finally, we applied the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to rank the identified challenges for COSD projects. We also present a prioritization-based taxonomy of the identified challenges which will help practitioners to focus on the critical areas for successful implementation of COSD projects.

A robust framework for cloud‐based software development outsourcing factors using analytical hierarchy process

AbstractManaging the cloud‐based software development outsourcing (CSDO) activities across the geographically distributed development sites are much challenging. This study aims to identify the success factors (SFs) for CSDO and prioritize them based on their significance. To achieve this objective, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) and survey study with industrial and academic experts. Finally, we applied the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to develop the framework based on the prioritization of the identified SFs. We believe that the findings of this study will assist the industry practitioners and researchers in developing effective strategies for the successful implementation of CSDO activities.

Requirements engineering issues causing software development outsourcing failure.

Software development outsourcing is becoming more and more famous because of the advantages like cost abatement, process enhancement, and coping with the scarcity of needed resources. Studies confirm that unfortunately a large proportion of the software development outsourcing projects fails to realize anticipated benefits. Investigations into the failures of such projects divulge that in several cases software development outsourcing projects are failed because of the issues that are associated with requirements engineering process. The objective of this study is the identification and the ranking of the commonly occurring issues of the requirements engineering process in the case of software development outsourcing. For this purpose, contemporary literature has been assessed rigorously, issues faced by practitioners have been identified and three questionnaire surveys have been organized by involving experienced software development outsourcing practitioners. The Delphi technique, cut-off value method and 50% rule have also been employed. The study explores 150 issues (129 issues from literature and 21 from industry) of requirements engineering process for software development outsourcing, groups the 150 issues into 7 identified categories and then extricates 43 customarily or commonly arising issues from the 150 issues. Founded on 'frequency of occurrence' the 43 customarily arising issues have been ranked with respect to respective categories (category-wise ranking) and with respect to all the categories (overall ranking). Categories of the customarily arising issues have also been ranked. The issues' identification and ranking contribute to design proactive software project management plan for dealing with software development outsourcing failures and attaining conjectured benefits of the software development outsourcing.

A Contingent Approach to Facilitating Conflict Resolution in Software Development Outsourcing Projects

With the wide spread of IT outsourcing, internal IT personnel have been required to change their roles from system development to organizational change agents such as securing software development outsourcing (SDO) success. Conflict resolution is critical to secure the SDO success, but the understanding of how IT personnel facilitate conflict resolution as change agents is limited. The purpose of this study is to understand the negative impact of conflicts on SDO outcomes and to investigate the moderating effect of IT personnel's conflict resolution facilitation (process facilitation, content facilitation) between conflicts and two SDO outcome dimensions (project efficiency and system effectiveness). In order to test the model, data was collected through a cross-sectional field survey using questionnaires, and a total of 144 SDO projects were used in the final analysis. Research results show that conflicts have a negative impact on both of the SDO outcome dimensions, and the effect of conflict resolution facilitation by IT personnel is contingent on the dimensions of SDO outcomes.