Using E-markets for Globally Distributed Work

For over a decade, dedicated E-markets have been facilitating globally distributed systems development by enhancing the traditionally high-risk global sourcing processes. At the same time, the success and potential of E-markets for sourcing project globally can be questioned, as E-markets embody a variety of temporal, geographical and socio-cultural gaps. To study the effectiveness of the mechanisms offered by the E-markets, we ran a field experiment in which four development teams worked for 10 weeks to have a software development product designed, programmed and tested by remote developer(s) using an E-market. Three out of the four teams managed to deliver a successful product within time and budget. This result exceeded our expectations and contradicts the critical observations and opinions in several blogs and news articles. We find that for effective e-Market sourcing a skilled customer team with competences including vendor selection, software contracting, software requirements specification, development methods, cross-cultural and virtual communications, use of various cloud based tools, frequent functional and non functional testing are necessary