An Exploratory Study of Success Factors in Software Integration for Global Software Development Vendors
An Exploratory Study of Success Factors in Software Integration for GSD Vendors
Keywords:
software integration, systematic literature review, global software development, vendors, success factorsAbstract
The trend of software development has changed from local to global software development (GSD) with acceleration in information and communication technologies. GSD offers certain benefits like reduced cost, high quality, availing skilled human resource and latest technology etc. It also faces a lot of challenges like communication coordination issues, cultural, language and temporal challenges along with the technical challenge of software integration. The objective of the current study is to identify success factors for software integration to assist GSD vendors in integrating the software components into a final working product. We have used the systematic literature review (SLR) process by following standard SLR guidelines. We have identified a list of 14 success factors by extracting data from 89 selected papers. Out of these, 9 factors were ranked as critical success factors (CSFs). Some of the top ranked CSFs are “Consistency in Requirements and Architecture Design”, “Intra and inter team Communication and Coordination” and “Component/Unit Testing prior to integration”. We have also analyzed these CSFs on the basis of period published, project size and methodology used. We identified 9 CSFs which may assist GSD vendors in almost all size of projects at different phases of the software integration process.
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