Investigating Critical Success Factors of Project Management in Global Software Development: A Work in Progress

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Investigating Critical Success Factors of Project Management in
Global Software Development: A Work in Progress
Nazish Saleem
School of Food and Advanced Technology
Massey University
Auckland, NewZealand
N.Saleem@massey.ac.nz
Dr.Sanjay Mathrani
School of Food and Advanced Technology
Massey University
Auckland, NewZealand
S.Mathrani@massey.ac.nz
Dr.Nazim Taskin
School of Management
Massey University
Auckland, NewZealand
N.Taskin@massey.ac.nz
Abstract
Global software development (GSD) business model has gained recognition over the years
for achieving competitiveness in the global market. However, its implementation is not easy
due to its complex nature and the various challenges it faces. Project management is a vital
area in software development with significant impact to the GSD process. Companies adopt
GSD without knowing its implications which lead to failure of their project management
processes. Existing project management practises do not address the core issues of GSD,
which makes the process more intricate. This research paper investigates the project
management practices in GSD and identifies its critical success factors with the development
of a framework that will facilitate software companies to implement GSD successfully.
Keywords
Global software development, project management, critical success factors
1 Introduction
Global software development is a promising paradigm and is becoming a norm for most of
the software companies, more so with the incorporation of latest technologies such as mobile
technologies, cloud solutions and advanced collaboration tools into businesses (Lesser &
Ban, 2016). The inspiration behind embracing GSD is to attain highly skilled resources at
reduced cost, and achieve fast delivery and competitive advantage (Jain & Suman, 2015). In
GSD, more technical resources are accessible at lower costs, which is the major reason
behind its growth. It enables software engineers to collaborate over cultural, temporal,
geographical and linguistic distances that supports acceptance in GSD (Lesser & Ban, 2016;
Niazi, 2016). Essentially, GSD is a business model, in which development teams achieve
substantial benefits that include cost saving, fast turnaround and skill diversity while
operating across national boundaries (Jain & Suman, 2015; Khan & Khan, 2017). Although
GSD delivers significant reimbursements for software development companies, it also faces
some severe challenges. Major challenges are related to communication, coordination and
control which are caused by different kinds of distances including geographical, socio-
cultural, temporal and organizational distances (Babar & Lescher, 2014; Jain & Suman, 2015;
Jan, Dad, Amin, Hameed, & Shah, 2016). Due to these challenges, GSD turns exclusively
different from co-located software development. Despite GSD having established a stable

identity since the last decade and its usage is progressing, its survival still depends on
overcoming these challenges.
Achieving project success is a major concern for both vendor and client organizations in any
type of collaborative software development model. The definition of project success has
evolved over time with respect to perception of different stakeholders. According to the
traditional viewpoint in 1970’s, a project is considered successful if it is completed within a
predefined time, cost and quality standards based on consideration of project managers
(Davis, 2014; de Carvalho, Patah, & de Souza Bido, 2015). However, in later views till
1990’s, technical aspects of the project associated with the client company were taken into
account in defining success based on internal stakeholders concerns about project success.
After 1990’s, both internal and external stakeholder’s perceptions were considered for project
success. However, in the current era, project success depends on four parameters that include
predefined success criteria by stakeholders, collaborative working relationship, flexible
project manager, and owner’s interest in project performance (Davis, 2014).
According to a report by Standish group published in 2014, 31% projects did not reach to
completion due to cancellation and 53% projects completely failed due to poor cost estimates
(Clancy, 2014). Majority of the reasons for software project failure are related to project
management practices. (Lehtinen, Mäntylä, Vanhanen, Itkonen, & Lassenius, 2014). In the
case of GSD as well, most projects fail due to inappropriate project management practices
(Jain & Suman, 2018; Niazi, 2016). Consequently, success of a GSD project is closely related
to the successful enactment of project management practices as well as organizational and
human aspects that need to be explored in a GSD context (Jain & Suman, 2018).
Project management is a challenging domain of software development that includes several
methods, processes, techniques and knowledge areas (Jain & Suman, 2018). Project
management practices are not same across all countries, for example preferred method of
communication is face-to-face or phone calls along with written backups in developed
countries like Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Canada, while in developing
countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where communication is managed though
status updates at fixed intervals (Khilkhanova, Tsay, & Umpleby, 2010). Additionally,
diverse working habits, e.g., values, quality standards, terminology and type of hierarchy are
observed within different corporate cultures which lead to different project management
practices in different countries (M. Niazi et al., 2016). In case of global software
development, project management becomes more intricate due to a multitude of challenges
that require developing a framework in order to address the project management issues (Jain
& Suman, 2018; Niazi, 2016).
A wide range of studies (Jain & Suman, 2018; M. Niazi et al., 2016) talk about the challenges
and success factors in GSD, however there are less evidences that discuss project
management success and frameworks in this business model. There are a lot of studies that
also propose solutions to various issues in GSD, especially related to virtual team, culture,
requirement, knowledge and process improvement (Jan et al., 2016; Niazi, 2016). However
little research has been conducted that addresses the project management process
comprehensively in a GSD environment and development of a framework for the process.
Project management is a significant field in software development and it becomes more vital
due to challenges of GSD. Therefore, it is necessary to explore this area so that its essentials
could be found which make project management more demanding (Jain & Suman, 2018;
Niazi, 2016). There would be numerous factors which have strong influence on project
management. So it is really worth to find out those factors which must be evaluated for

successful project management in a GSD context. Additionally, current research mostly
considers the vendor perspective and less number of studies have evaluated both client and
vendor perspectives. In the GSD environment, client and vendor companies operate at
various levels such as country, company and team levels, therefore could face different issues
at these levels. Countries differ in their policies and regulations and companies can have
diverse organizational structures. Additionally, teams may differ in their structure which
could lead to project complexities. In literature, there are some studies that have explored
GSD challenges only at the technical and non-technical levels (Mishra & Mishra, 2011).
Therefore, it is significantly important to investigate challenges and critical success factors at
a broader level which provide the justification for this study.
The purpose of this study is to undertake an empirical assessment to identify critical success
factors (CSFs) for project management success in global software development through a
qualitative and quantitative evaluation which will lead to the development of a framework for
this business model. The research questions addressed in this study are: 1) what are the
CSF’S for project management in vendor companies involved in GSD? 2) What are the
CSF’s for project management in client companies involved in GSD? 3) Is there any variation
of critical success factors for project management between client and vendor companies in
GSD? 4) How could these critical success factors be grouped at the country, company and
team levels in GSD? 5) What are the antecedents and consequences of critical success factors
for GSD at the country, company and team levels?
2 Literature review
2.1 Challenges and benefits in global software development
Global software development is a prevailing trend since last several years and research in this
field has uncovered that many software companies despite their sizes and project types, desire
to globalize their business in order to achieve strategic and economic benefits with improved
product quality (Babar & Lescher, 2014; Jain & Suman, 2015; M. Niazi et al., 2016). Major
advantages of GSD include less time to development, cheap cost, nearer proximity to local
market, access to large pool of competent developers, code modularization and improved
record of communication (Jain & Suman, 2018). These potential benefits are difficult to
achieve due to various challenges in GSD on technical, cultural, political, and social levels
(Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001) which are due to geographical, temporal, socio-cultural, linguistic,
and organizational distances (Jain & Suman, 2015). Global software development is a wide
domain that not only involves different teams but different companies and countries as well.
One study (Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001) on GSD reported that physical separation of teams
results into diverse challenges at both technical and non-technical levels. Technical
challenges are mostly related to configuration management, incompatible data formats,
version management, software integration and architecture of system components. Non-
technical challenges are related to culture, communication, collaboration, coordination, team
dynamics, trust, distance, time difference, knowledge management, project and process
management (Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001; Mishra & Mishra, 2011). It is important to
understand the GSD challenges at different levels in order to define solutions for inherited
issues in GSD (Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001; Mishra & Mishra, 2011).
2.2 Client and vendor perspective in global software development
Companies in GSD are mostly client and vendor companies, although in some cases one
company could operate from its different locations as well. Client companies get benefit in
terms of cost savings and vendor companies from favourable governmental policies and tax

aids. Moreover, these companies become more proficient of utilizing communication
infrastructure in their home environment (Jain & Suman, 2015) and outsource their technical
work to vendors with shared risks keeping focus on their core business processes. For
example, a bank outsource its technical processes a more skilled workforce while keeping its
focus limited to core processes (Khan, Niazi, & Ahmad, 2010). Vendor companies add value
to the supply chain by learning more skills required by clients over a period of time.
Regardless of these benefits, most of the client and vendor companies fail in GSD due to
inappropriate management processes and inadequate preparation (M. Niazi et al., 2016).
Factors such as trust, relationship, risk and culture management are significantly important
for both client and vendor companies.
2.3 Local versus global software development
According to a study conducted on local and global software projects by Standish group,
GSD projects failure ratio is greater than the local software projects (Holtkamp, Lau, &
Pawlowski, 2015). Several studies also show that about 40 percent of GSD projects have
failed (Jain & Suman, 2018) and major reasons behind this failure are high coordination cost,
culture misunderstandings, lack of face-to- face communication, experience in GSD,
requirement understanding, common language and standard process (Abrahamsson, Salo,
Ronkainen, & Warsta, 2017). All these issues cause mistrust, frustration and
misunderstandings which lead to rework, defects, delays and poor acceptance level (Jain &
Suman, 2015).
Although GSD has set its foundation however practices, tools, strategies to implement a
successful global software development program are not standardized. In co-located software
development, several different process models such as Waterfall, Rapid Application
Development and Spiral are followed for the development of software product while in GSD
there is still lack of standard approaches to develop software products (Abrahamsson et al.,
2017). In the beginning of GSD, companies tried to use traditional software process models
like Waterfall which resulted into higher failure rate of distributed projects. Later, Agile
methods were applied in distributed projects however these methods could not solve all
problems related to GSD (Alsahli et al., 2017). This is due to the fact that agile methods and
sequential approaches like waterfall are designed for co-located software development and
these do not consider distance and their associated challenges in GSD (Abrahamsson et al.,
2017). This is the main reason that these processes do not provide satisfactory results when
applied to GSD. GSD is intrinsic with such challenges which must be addressed to achieve
project success. Software development processes which are applied for co-located software
development, including sequential and agile methods, also need to be tailored, improved or
require new frameworks to meet GSD requirements (Jain & Suman, 2015). Therefore there is
a need to develop new processes or modify existing processes to support GSD (Jain &
Suman, 2018; Niazi, 2016).
2.4 Project management in global software development
Project management has always been a burning issue amongst the software development
community. Researchers have suggested to pay close attention towards project management
activities because project and project management success both are equally important for the
business success (M. Niazi et al., 2016). In case of GSD, project management becomes more
complicated due to intricacy of GSD distances (temporal, socio-cultural, geographical,
organizational) (Colomo-Palacios, Casado-Lumbreras, Soto-Acosta, García-Peñalvo, &
Tovar, 2014; Jain & Suman, 2018). It is significant for an organization to achieve and
maintain a high success rate to sustain in the global market. Therefore, an exceptional project

management is necessary. There are several studies e.g., (Iftikhar, Alam, Musa, & Su'ud,
2017; Khan & Khan, 2017; Yaseen, Baseer, & Sherin, 2015) which talk about the success of
GSD which depends on the requirement change management, process improvement,
developing relationship between client and vendor, software integration and use of tools in
managing GSD projects.
Project management in GSD is a less researched area, as few numbers of studies are
conducted that specifically address project management in this domain (M. Niazi et al.,
2016). One study concluded that every organization either client or vendor should be aware
of identified challenges prior to the adoption of global software development (M. Niazi et al.,
2016). Another research revealed that there are nine success factors which are important to
address for successful project management in GSD (Niazi, 2016). Although a significant
amount of research has been completed in several areas of GSD including knowledge
management, virtual team management, communication, risk management, task allocation
and effort estimation, unfortunately researchers have not much emphasized on the
development of a project management framework compiling important knowledge areas for
GSD (Jain & Suman, 2018).
Recently, one study proposed a framework based on the project management challenges that
include communication, coordination, control and collaboration due to temporal,
geographical, socio-culture and organizational distances. Major contribution of this study is
compiling knowledge areas that are required for effective project management in GSD. This
framework covers five knowledge areas – feasibility and risk management, virtual team
management, knowledge management, scope and resource management, and performance
management –based on PMBOK (project management body of knowledge) and emphasises
that managing these areas is essential for effective project management in GSD (Jain &
Suman, 2018).
3 A critical success factors framework for project management in global
software development
Although the project management framework by Jain & Suman 2018 considers knowledge
areas based on PMBOK and takes challenges into account with respect to four distances
related to communication, coordination, control and collaboration, this framework does not
consider the most important factors for project management in GSD. Communication is a
core issue in GSD which is not addressed in the existing framework. Moreover, scope and
resource management are considered as a single knowledge area. Scope, cost and schedule
management have been included in this knowledge area while requirement management,
which is also an important concern for project management in GSD, is missed out in this
framework.
In this paper, a new framework is proposed based on the CSF’s extracted from literature
focusing on studies with practitioners having industrial experience. The project management
framework developed by Jain & Suman sets the foundation for this new framework as it was
the first formal project management framework in GSD. The existing framework is extended
to include additional knowledge areas such as communication management, resource
management (scope, cost, and schedule) and scope management (requirements) separately
because requirement management is significantly important in GSD. Moreover, human
resource management is also added that includes virtual team and stakeholders as shown in
shown in Figure 1. This figure includes the important knowledge areas of project
management for GSD under which CSF’s extracted through literature and industrial
experience will be listed.

4 Future plans and contribution
Global software development is a model that faces several challenges and is important for
companies to know its core issues with possible solutions. An effective project management
in GSD can achieve major requirements for a successful implementation of this business
model.
In future, this research will identify critical success factors related to project management in
GSD by using a mixed-method approach with both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative
(survey) research methods using two levels of analysis – client and vendor operations and
country, company and team level operations. In the first phase of the research, CSF’s will be
evaluated through literature and interview-based case studies with client and vendor
participants of identified companies, to capture their operational experiences. In the second
phase, these CSF’s will be examined through a global questionnaire survey to gather different
country, company and team context insights from a vendor and client perspective of
participants from different global regions. A list of CSF’s will be developed through a cross
analysis of findings from both phases of research. Variation of these factors between client
and vendor companies will also be investigated. Finally, the antecedents and consequences of
these factors in GSD at different levels of operations (country, company, and team) will also
be identified.
This research aims to contribute to the current knowledge in three ways. Firstly, it will
identify CSF’s for project management in GSD and will group these factors at the country,
company and team level. It will help companies to understand their project management
practices at different operational levels prior to start of GSD. Secondly, this study will
examine variation of critical success factors between client and vendor companies, which will
Fig 1: Critical success factors framework for project management in global software
development (Adapted from Jain & Suman 2018)
Resource management
(Cost, schedule)
Knowledge
management
(tacit, explicit)
Human resource
management (virtual
team, stakeholders)
GSD
project
manageme
nt
Performance
management
(quality, process)
Scope management
(Requirements)
Feasibility and
risk management
Communication
management

help client and vendor companies to focus only on those factors related to them. Thirdly, this
study will develop a project management framework based on the critical success factors and
relate those factors under different knowledge areas. It will also identify the project
management practices which are only related to GSD and those which exist in both GSD and
PMBOK. All these findings will be helpful for academia and industry practitioners to
understand specifications and implementation of project management in GSD.
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