Critical Impeding Factors in Software Outsourcing Projects and Their
Analysis Using Different Parameters: A Systematic Literature Review
Abstract
During the past decade, most global firms have adopted the global
software engineering approach for outsourcing their software development
projects to reduce their cost and time-to-market, enhance their access
to the competitive market, and advance their technical skills and
resources. This paradigm shift from conventional geographically-bound
development to a globalized software industry has happened due to an
abrupt improvement in information and communication technologies. One of
the successful paradigms of global software engineering is offshore
software development, which has turned into an extremely beneficial
industry for many of its stakeholders. However, this industry is posed
with many impeding factors that impede the successful completion of
numerous outsourcing projects. In this study, we have detected several
significant impeding factors faced by the outsourcing industry. We
employed a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) methodology and utilized
constructed search criteria originated from our anticipated research
questions, followed by choosing the particular research articles,
inclusion and exclusion criteria, data extraction, and data synthesis,
which resulted in 16 impeding factors from 118 final selected papers
that were published between 2010 and 2024. Among these, eight impeding
factors were identified as Critical Impeding Factors (CIFs).
Furthermore, the investigated impeding factors have been analyzed by
considering different scenarios, such as region-wise, research strategy
based, and organization size. Our results can play a vital role for the
outsourcing industry in improving its procedures to enhance their
communication strategies, contract negotiation and management processes,
cultural and language issues, and project monitoring.