Software integration in global software development: Challenges for GSD vendors

Abstract

Context The advances in information and communication technologies have revolutionized the software development environment from local to global software development (GSD). This revolution also created challenges for vendor organizations. Vendors face challenges in integrating the components developed independently by GSD teams into a final working product. Objective The objectives of the current study is to find out those critical barriers/challenges that hinder the integration process at any stage in the GSD environment for different types and size of projects. Methodology For achieving the objectives we initially conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review (SLR). We searched 6 digital libraries and also followed the snowballing technique. The data was extracted from a total of 88 finally selected papers. Findings of the SLR study were then empirically validated through a questionnaire survey in GSD industry. A total of 96 experts from 22 different countries participated in the survey. Results We have found a total of 16 barriers/challenges among which ten barriers are ranked as critical barriers/challenges. Some of the top ranked barriers are “lack of communication,” “lack of proper documentation,” “lack of compatibility,” and “architecture mismatch.” The findings of our industrial survey are mostly coherent with the SLR findings. However, there is a difference in ranks of the various barriers/challenges across the 2 data sets (SLR and industrial survey). The identified challenges need to be properly addressed by software vendors to reduce the complexity of the integration process in GSD projects. Conclusion We found that the severity of these barriers increases in large size projects. On the other hand, bespoke products are more affected by “lack of communication,” while off‐the‐shelf–based projects face integration problems due to “lack of compatibility,” “architecture mismatch,” and “wrong off the shelf product selection and customization”.

Using agile methods for the development of green and sustainable software: Success factors for GSD vendors

“…When more than one factor share the same value, they are all given the same average rank, and the rank of the factor with next value is adjusted appropriately. The same approach for calculating and examining ranking of success factors have been used by other researchers . For example, in Table , both “minimal reengineering” and “optimized code” have a value of 30 in the data set and thus share the ranks 8 and 9 giving an average rank of 8.5 while “flexibility towards change,” which has the next highest value (ie, 29), is given a rank of 10 because both ranks 8 and 9 have been used.…”

Agile practices for global software development vendors in the development of green and sustainable software

“…We have adapted 2 different research methods, SLR and questionnaire survey, for the identification of agile practices to produce green and sustainable software. Similar research procedure is adopted by other researchers …”

“…If a success factor is cited in the literature with a frequency percentage of 40% or above, then we treat that success factor as a CSFs in this explorative study. A similar criterion has also been used by other researchers …”

“…Similar research procedure is adopted by other researchers. [60][61][62] In supersession to findings of the SLR and questionnaire survey, 5 case studies have been conducted, at vendor organizations that practices green software development through agile approach, to test the applicability of these practices in real-world environment. The practices were validated by all 5 vendor organizations and found these practices beneficial for the organizations towards the assessment of green-agile maturity.…”

“…A similar criterion has also been used by other researchers. [75][76][77][78] Ilyas et al 78 have identified important factors in software integration challenges in GSD, and they argue if 30% or more participants perceive that a factor has a major role in software integration and then that factor should be treated as having a major impact on software integration in GSD. However, agile software development practitioners can define their own criteria to decide the criticality of the identified success factors.…”