CSFs for Offshore Software Projects Critical Success Factors for Managing Offshore Software Development Projects

Early experiences with offshore software development (OSD) have not been consistently positive. There have been abundant media reports of various companies whose offshore projects were not able to live up to expectations. It would appear that this can be traced back to insufficient project management by the offshore project partners. In this context, some research has been carried out on the critical success factors of offshore software development projects from the perspective of U.S. clients as well as Indian and European providers. However, there is little research on these critical success factors that examines their relevance and management. This paper identifies and structures the critical success factors of offshore software development projects, and more importantly, it analyzes the relevance of the identified factors from several perspectives, such as type of company, company size, geographical location, project type, size and experience. Our findings are in particular relevant for companies in countries where English is not the first language and where OSD is still an emerging field.