1,464 research outputs found
A Method to Evaluate the Suitability of Requirements Specifications for Offshore Projects
Today, even the development of business information systems is subject to the global offshoring trend. With the division of development work in an inter-organizational and intercultural context, requirements specifications become the central means to communicate the development scope as explicitly as possible. The suitability of requirements specifications hence often is mission critical in offshore projects. To assess their suitability, we first present eight quality criteria for requirements specifications. We then discuss five critical compensating factors that may potentially balance out an insufficient specification quality during the offshore project. On this basis, we describe a method to rationally evaluate the suitability of requirements specifications for instantiating an offshore project. We illustrate the application of the method by elaborating on a large case study that has been conducted with an industry partner. The results achieved by applying our method were confirmed during the further course of the actual project
Goal and Risk Factors in Offshore Outsourced Software Development From Vendor's Viewpoint
Reducing production cost is vital for ensuring
sustainable competitive strength. This is particularly
true in software development, in which there has been
a move from in-house development to global and now
also to offshore-outsourced software development. In
offshore outsourcing, development activities are mostoften
moved to low-cost development environments that
are locally managed. However, this type of outsourcing
is not without problems. Most development projects are
complex, and moving control and responsibility away
from the client increase complexity. But, there is a
trade-off between cost and complexity and control, as
well as an increased chance of failure of the project.
This paper contributes to identify the goals from the
early development components and risk factors
threatening the goals to fulfill. A goal-driven software
development risk management modeling (GSRM)
propose to supports this task. We conducted a study
based on Delphi survey process to obtain the goals and
the risk factors in a different cultural environment for
the offshore vendors in Banglades
Motivators of adopting social computing in global software development: Initial results
context: Real-time collaboration is critical for developing high quality software systems at low cost in a geographically distributed Global Software Development (GSD) environment. It is anticipated that emerging Social Computing tools can play an important role in facilitating realtime effective collaboration among teams working in the GSD. Objective: The objective of this research paper is to identify motivators for adopting social computing in GSD organizations. Method: We adopted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach by applying customized search strings derived from our research questions. Results: We have identified factors such as real-time communication and coordination, information sharing, knowledge acquisition and expert feedback as key motivators for adoption of social computing in GSD. Conclusion: Based on the SLR results, we suggest that GSD organizations should embrace social computing as a tool for real-time collaboration between distributed GSD teams. The results of this initial study also suggest the need for developing the social computing strategies and policies to guide the effective social computing adoption by GSD teams
Global and regional sourcing of ICT-enabled business services: upgrading of China, Hong Kong and Singapore along the global value chain
Offshoring, as part of globalisation, first started decades ago with manufacturing processes disintegrated along the global value chain and dramatically redistributed to low-cost regions. The next global shift of work involving ICT-enabled business services has arisen since the 1990s, especially featuring the success of India’s supplier role. The possibilities for the Global South to move up the value ladder are well demonstrated by the achievements of the newly industrialised economies in East Asia in the first shift and of India in the second. In the services sector, however, potential for upgrading is conditioned by quality-based elements, such as trust, culture and language, which vary both between producing and market areas. Flows are increasingly multi-directional, requiring attention to the neglected issue of demands from fast-growing Southern economies.
So how do locations and firms in the Global South attempt to upgrade in the regime of rising services offshoring? The Indian experience especially in serving Anglophone markets in the Global North has been widely documented – but not that of East Asian economies, with their distinct characteristics and strong historic, ethnic and cultural ties with each other. This study examines the upgrading possibilities and constraints of China, Hong Kong and Singapore along the global services chain. For cross-case analysis, it focuses on three specific sets of services, including information technology, finance and accounting, and customer contact services. The concepts of global value chain, competitive advantage and capabilities are applied to reconstruct the phenomenon of services offshoring from both the demand and supply perspectives in the selected locations, and synthesise the dynamics between locational characteristics and firm strategies. A series of distinct upgrading strategies are identified, involving mixes of manufacturisation, knowledge-intensification and deepening relational capabilities to exploit both regional advantages of language/cultural proximity and established global links
Towards a Framework for Offshore Outsource Software Development Risk Management Model
Due to high demands on cost savings in software
development projects, offshore outsource software
development is becoming increasingly popular. Offshore
outsourcing takes advantages of large labor pool in lowwage
countries, round-the-clock development, and easy
access to additional resources, in addition to the
development cost savings. However, there are risks
associated to this trend, as it brings new challenges into the
development process, where some may even jeopardise the
cost savings. The geographical and cultural distance is one
part of the problem, inexperienced developers and lack of
communication and a common cultural basis are other
challenges. We therefore advocate the use of risk
management (RM) to control risks in offshore outsource
development. Here we present a RM framework tailored
for such development contexts. The model; Goal-driven
Software Development Risk Management modelling
(GSRM) framework, assesses and manages risk during the
early development phases, where risks can easier be tackled
at a reasonable cost. The framework is comprised of four
layers that together identify and link project goals, risks and
treatments together in a goal-risk causal relationship model.
The goal model makes use of an extended subset of the
KAOS goal modelling language. We report on a study
project focusing on the efficiency of the GSRM process
model
Offshore-Outsourced Software Development Risk Management Model
Offshore-outsourced software development is gaining
popularity because companies are continuously forced to
reduce production costs while keeping sustainable
competitive strength. However, this trend of software
development increases projects’ complexity and brings up
risks to the overall project environment. Therefore, risks
of offshore software development require to be managed
as early as possible for a successful project. This paper
considers a risk management model from a holistic
perspective to manage offshore software development
risk, integrated into early stages of development. The
approach effectively identifies and specifies the goals of a
project and the related risk factors. This is done at the
basis of selected software development components within
the running project. We show how to trace and control
these risks already during early requirements engineering
activities. The model at hand is implemented into an ongoing
offshore software development project to (1)
identify goals and risk factors from the local context and
finally (2) to determine its applicability of the approach in
offshore software development projects from a vendor’s
perspective
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