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The software industry has widely adopted global software development (GSD) to gain economic benefits. Organizations that engage in GSD face various challenges, the majority being associated with requirements change management (RCM). The key motive of this study is to develop a requirement change management and implementation maturity model (SRCMIMM) for the GSD industry that could help the practitioners to assess and manage their RCM activities. A systematic literature review and questionnaire survey approach are used to identify and validate the critical success factors (CSFs), critical challenges (CCHs), and the related best practices of the RCM process. The investigated CSFs and CCHs are classified into five maturity levels based on the concepts of the existing maturity models in other domains, practitioners' feedback, and academic research. Every maturity level comprises different CSFs and CCHs that can help assess and manage a firm's RCM capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, four case studies are conducted in different GSD firms. The SRCMIMM has been developed to assist GSD organizations in improving their RCM process in efficiency and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of organisations are globalising their software development activities by following the ideas of global software development (GSD). The motivation behind the adoption of GSD phenomena are the list of benefits gained by the software industry. However, there are different challenges face by the GSD organisations, particularly the issues related to software process improvement (SPI). The aim of this study is the identification and classification into categories of the success factors that can impact SPI initiatives taken in GSD organisations. The systematic literature review (SLR) method has been used to extract the success factors from the literature. SLR phases, 'planning, conducting, and reporting the review' have been followed to perform this study. Totally, 15 success factors were identified and classified into the six main categories. The authors have also reported the critical success factors of SPI, i.e. management commitment, staff involvement, roles and responsibilities, communication, and resources allocation. This article also reported the similarities and differences between the success factors classified on the bases of client‐vendor organisation and size of the organisation. The identified factors can contribute towards the implementation of SPI programme in both client and vendor GSD organisations because these factors represent key areas of process improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, many software development organisations are globalising their work throughout the world. The motivation behind the software globalisation is competitive advantage and business profits that it yields to an organisation. Besides, these organisations are facing various challenges due to the distributed nature of the software development. However, software process improvement (SPI) is one of the biggest issues in the domain of global software development (GSD). The aim of this research study is to identify success factors and barriers to assist GSD organisations for successful implementation of SPI program. Accordingly, a systematic literature review approach was adopted to identify the success factors and barriers. A total of nine success factors and six barriers were identified that could impact SPI. Using the criteria of the factors having a frequency >50% as critical, total four success factors were ranked as critical success factors, i.e. management commitment, staff involvement, allocated resources and pilot projects. Moreover, total four barriers were classified as critical barriers, i.e. lack of resources, inexperienced staff, organisational politics and time pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • Explore the factors that could positively impact the agile scaling process in Chinese global software development (GSD) industry. • Develop the conceptual mapping of the identified factors. • Conceptual mapping is empirically validated. • The fuzzy AHP approach used to priorities the identified factors and the respective categories. • Develop the recommendation taxonomy of the factors based on the fuzzy AHP findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • Identifying the barriers which negatively impact on the scaling programs of agile development in GSD environment. • Categorizing the identified barriers according to their types. • Validation of the identified barriers using the questionnaire survey. • Prioritizing the barriers using fuzzy AHP method by collecting responses of pair-wise comparison of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • Identifying the factors which positively affects the SPI practices in GSD environment. • Categorizing the identified factors according to their types. • Identifying the factors in the real world practices which positively affects the SPI practices in GSD environment. • Prioritizing the success factors using fuzzy AHP methods by collecting responses of pair-wise comparison of factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]