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.