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Global Software Development (GSD) has gained great attention during the past decade or so, and it is also being adopted by most of the software development organizations. The GSD approach is practiced by the software development organizations in China and a wide range of firms have established its operations in various Chinese cities. However, GSD practices becomes more challenging for the projects based on the agile concepts. The aim of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the factors that could positively impact the scaling process of agile methods in the Chinese GSD industry. The factors are identified by exploring the available literature and conducting industrial study with the Chinese agile and GSD practitioners. The finally reported factors are categorized, prioritized and developed their taxonomy using the multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) Fuzzy AHP approach. The given taxonomy is significant and progressive for GSD industry to assess and improve the scaling process of agile methods.

Cloud-Based Outsource Software Development (COSD) is a new methodology adopted by organizations to develop software using teams of knowledge workers located across the globe using cloud computing services. However, there is a lack of understanding of challenges associated with successful execution of COSD projects. The objective of this study is to identify and prioritize the challenges that influence COSD projects. First, we conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and identified 21 challenges that impact COSD projects. Next, a questionnaire survey was developed based on the SLR findings to collect feedback from industry practitioners. Finally, we applied the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) to rank the identified challenges for COSD projects. We also present a prioritization-based taxonomy of the identified challenges which will help practitioners to focus on the critical areas for successful implementation of COSD projects.

Increasingly, software development organizations are scaling agile practices in the global software development (GSD) environment in order to meet the requirements of the quickly changing and regularly developing business environment. The main objectives of this study are to investigate the key barriers and develop a prioritization-based taxonomy of the barriers for scaling agile development in the GSD environment. Total twenty-two barriers were extracted from the available literature and categorized into five categories, i.e. “human resources management”, ‘coordination”, “technology”, “project management”, and “software methodology”. In the next phase, the identified barriers and their categories were further validated using the questionnaire survey. In the final phase, fuzzy-AHP method, a multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) technique, was applied to prioritize and taxonomy of identified barriers and their related categories was designed. The contribution of this study is not limited to investigate the barriers, but it also provides the roadmap to tackle the issues related to the scaling agile methods in the GSD environment.

The phenomena of global software development (GSD) face many challenges that are specifically associated with software process improvement (SPI). The main objective of this work is to develop the prioritization-based taxonomy of the SPI success factors using the fuzzy AHP approach. Total of twenty-one factors were extracted from the available literature that were further evaluated by conducting questionnaire survey with the SPI experts. In the second stage, multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) fuzzy AHP tool was used to prioritize and develop the taxonomy of the identified factors and their categories. The implications of fuzzy AHP approach are novel in this research area as it has been successfully used previously in different other domains e.g. electrical and electronics, supplier selection, agile software development and personnel selection. The contribution of this study is not only limited to the development of the factor’s taxonomy, but also their proper prioritization by introducing the novel fuzzy AHP approach in the research field of GSD and SPI, which assist to remove the vagueness and uncertainty in the opinion of the process improvement experts.