Abstract

With the maturity of information and communication technologies, offshore development of software by outsourcers is a new trend for reshaping IT strategy around the globe. Technological advances have increased the interconnection between different societies, facilitating a continuous software development cycle or follow-the-sun approach by having team members located in different geographical settings. Software development is an iterative process, in which knowledge builds with the progression of software development work and requires an ongoing awareness by team members of all the changing definitions and relationships in the development effort. This poses a bigger challenge in a global environment as the software development processes happen in a dynamic and distributed setting. New Zealand and India are both exemplars of the emerging offshore software producer market, and hence a study of their offshore software development processes forms a basis of this research study. These issues are illustrated using three case studies of offshore software providers in New Zealand and India. The case study data reveals that these firms emphasize on different drivers for success in their work practices as they compete as outsourcing destinations.

Citations