Control, Process Facilitation, and Requirements Change in Offshore Requirements Analysis: The Provider Perspective

Process, technology, and project factors have been increasingly driving organizations to offshore early software development phases, such as requirements analysis. This emerging trend necessitates greater control and process facilitation between client and vendor sites. The effectiveness of control and facilitation has, however, not been examined within the context of requirements analysis and change. In this study, we examine the role of control and facilitation in managing changing requirements and on success of requirements gathering in the Indian offshore software development environment. Firms found that control by client-site coordinators had a positive impact on requirements analysis success while vender site-coordinators did not have similar influence. Process facilitation by client site-coordinators affected requirements phase success indirectly through control. The study concludes with recommendations for research and practice

Moving Towards an Integrated Framework of IT-Outsourcing Success

Offshore information technology outsourcing is a popular strategic choice for businesses today. Firms are increasingly outsourcing their complex information technology-based projects, business processes, and services to offshore locations to achieve competitive advantage. Traditionally, offshore information technology outsourcing was a means to reduce costs and/or increase efficiencies by focusing on core activities. Recently, the emphasis has shifted to pursuing it as a strategy for cooperative advantage through resource sharing and building long-term relationships with the offshore partners. However, many such offshore outsourcing relationships fail due to a lack of understanding and proper operationalization of the critical success factors that influence global client–vendor partnerships. In the current study, the authors draw upon existing literature to identify popular theoretical perspectives and key operational, environmental, and relational factors influencing the success of offshore information technology outsourcing relationship. A framework of offshore information technology outsourcing success is then developed by integrating these theoretical perspectives and critical success factors. Exploratory data suggests that the proposed framework is valid for understanding offshore information technology outsourcing success and has important implications for theory and practice

Successful Management of an Outsourced Large-scale Digitization Newspaper Project

This article uses the case study of the Nevada Digital Newspaper Project (https://nvdnp.wordpress.com/), an extension of the National Digital Newspaper Program (https://www.loc.gov/ndnp/), to introduce proven strategies on how to successfully manage a large-scale digitization project. It provides tips on how to stay within the timeline and deliver products with outstanding quality, leveraging limited human resources, and engaging an external digitization vendor. It discusses practical project management techniques and tools, strategies for establishing collaborative vendor partnerships, and strategies for efficient communication with stakeholders

An empirical evaluation of client-vendor relationships in high maturity Indian software outsourcing companies

The study presented in this thesis investigates offshore software outsourcing relationships. Offshore software outsourcing has been increasing continuously for the last decade. More and more software vendor companies from different countries such as India, Russia, Brazil and China are joining the offshore `bandwagon'. Indian software companies especially have managed to secure a leading position as offshore software outsourcing vendors. However, with more client companies outsourcing their software operations offshore, issues associated with the establishment and management of offshore outsourcing relationships have become more important. With the growing volume of offshore outsourcing, the number of failures is also increasing. A review of the literature suggests that success or failure is mainly dependent on the management of relationships between client and vendor. Subsequently, it is imperative to identify critical factors that can help to better manage offshore software outsourcing relationships. Furthermore, it is also important to identify the difficulties faced in managing offshore relationships and also how clients and vendors develop mutual trust. Trust is important to understand in the offshore software outsourcing context as it has been reported as the most significant contributor to the management of any human relationship. Nonetheless, different advantages that motivate clients to outsource are also important in understanding offshore software outsourcing. In this study, motivators, difficulties, critical relationship management factors and trust building factors are studied by means of empirical investigation into eighteen high maturity Indian software companies and six of their clients based in the USA and Europe. Multiple case studies with grounded theory analysis techniques are used to conduct the empirical investigation. Grounded theory, which is a part of qualitative research, helps to develop emergent model from empirical data. Furthermore, multiple case studies are used as objects to collect qualitative data and organise overall investigation. The research methods used were piloted with two Indian software companies before conducting the full empirical investigation. The results of this investigation suggest that client companies are motivated to outsource their software offshore by cost savings, quality, flexibility, core competence, skills availability, higher productivity, faster development, technical expertise and high maturity of vendor. The results also uncovered difficulties faced by clients and vendors in managing relationships. Difficulties include managing cultural differences, expectation mismatch, language differences, loss of control, distance, time zone differences, workforce reshuffling and post-contractual matters. This investigation further identifies critical factors to managing offshore outsourcing relationships such as effective communication, a process driven approach, commitment to the project, transparency in actions, consistency in performance, value addition and allocating resources effectively in the project. Furthermore, results from this study suggest that previous work reference, experience and reputation in the offshore outsourcing business, background of the key vendor employees, investments, prototyping and personal visits from the client are important for achieving trust. This study also identifies that to maintain trust in the relationship both clients and vendors perceive critical factors such as commitment, process driven approach, communication, confidentiality, performance, honesty, transparency, demonstrability, personal relationships and working together in outsourcing project. Based on the results of the empirical results and their discussions, this study presents an emergent model and practical guidelines for managing offshore software outsourcing relationships. The uniqueness of this investigation is in its large scale empirical investigation into high maturity software companies. Furthermore, most previous studies have investigated either clients or vendors, whereas this study investigates vendors and their corresponding clients. An investigation into trust in offshore software outsourcing relationships is also a significant addition to the existing literature relevant to software outsourcing. The empirical investigation gave rise to proposals for discussions and to an emergent empirical model. Thus the current body of knowledge in offshore software outsourcing is enhanced by this work. Moreover, practical guidelines, based on empirical results are proposed for client and vendors to help them manage their offshore software outsourcing relationships

Information Systems Offshoring—A Literature Review and Analysis

IS offshoring has become one of the most discussed phenomena in IS research and practice. Particularly due to its rapid evolvement, current research on IS offshoring lacks a consolidated view on existing results. The article at hand seeks to meet this need by systematically reviewing and analyzing prior academic literature on IS offshoring. Based on a review of top-ranked IS and management journals as well as IS conference proceedings, we compile an exhaustive bibliography of ninety-six publications solely focusing on IS offshoring from a (project) management perspective. To adequately address the immense diversity of these publications, a multi-perspective research framework consisting of three perspectives, namely, research focus, research approach, and reference theory, is introduced and forms the basis for our literature analysis. The analysis results confirm the appropriateness of our framework and reveal directions for future research along the framework perspectives: Most importantly, in an effort to increase the significance and the trustworthiness of their results, researchers should apply a more theory-driven approach and provide a better description of their research context. Moreover, future research needs to pay particular attention to the pre-implementation stages of an IS offshoring initiative as well as the special nature of nearshoring and captive offshoring. Across all project stages, researchers should not only concentrate on the client point of view but incorporate multiple points of view

Offshoring effectiveness: Measurement and improvement with optimization approach.

This study takes a refreshing look at IT outsourcing from a vendor\u27s perspective and discusses best practices required to effectively manage offshore business needs and offshoring effectiveness. We have conducted a detailed investigation to learn why outsourcing ventures fail, how to effectively measure up to service provider capability, and how to deliver strategic value to the end customer. Extant literature does not talk about the vendor\u27s issues and problems in outsourcing, and our investigation emphasized the vendor\u27s perspective on offshoring strategy and offshore resource effectiveness as the two important differentiators in a make-or-buy decision. Measurement metrics for each of the two items were devised to estimate their effect on offshoring effectiveness. We spoke to some of the top 10 IT vendors in India, collected offshoring data from both clients and vendors, and used the data to validate our decision framework. The framework helps us to investigate current industry practices in IT outsourcing, identify issues and problems beyond the obvious advantages of outsourcing, and propose measures to assess offshoring effectiveness. The investigation gave us an opportunity to record the best IT practices as well as suggest possible improvements in the service or product delivery cycle to enhance customer experience

Building Trust Across Virtual Social Spaces: the Software Vendors’ Perspectives

Offshore outsourcing across the world has triggered a new social structure in the way global businesses operate, resulting in emerging virtual social spaces between clients and vendors. These social structures involve understanding of cultural connections over space and time through telecommunication networks, as knowledge intensive tasks are being realized across national boundaries. Clients and vendors belonging to diverse cultures are required to take measures to build trust in relationships for sustained professional success. This paper looks at the trust building practice and experience of four small and medium sized software vendor organizations based in New Zealand and India. The case study data reveals how vendors are sensitized to client apprehensions in sharing knowledge across virtual social spaces. Some practices identified are face-to-face communication to bring visibility of social cue codes, documentation as a common thread of control, international accreditations to build reputations, and use of integrated groupware solutions with privileges for both clients and vendors. A ‘trust curve’ model is proposed to show the trust building process taking visibility factors as determinants of trust

It-Offshoring – A Comparison of Expectations and Experiences

The BITKOM (German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media) forecasts a serious lack of IT experts on the German labour market in the upcoming years. Despite of the recession because of the financial crisis they predict around 11,000 vacancies, especially in the field of software development. One instrument to overcome the expected shortage is the deployment of experts from abroad through IT-offshoring. Based on an empirical study conducted in 2004/05 at Pforzheim University this article analyses the expectations and experiences of German companies with offshore software development. The comparison shows that companies without direct experience with offshore software development underestimate the opportunities and overestimate the risks of this internationalization instrument.Offshoring, Internationalization, Transaction cost theory, Principal-Agent-Theory, International Software Development