Critical Success Factors for Offshore Software Development Outsourcing Vendors: An Empirical Study

CONTEXT – Offshore software development outsourcing is a contractual business of high quality software production with significant cost-saving. OBJECTIVE – The objective of this research paper is to analyse the factors that influence software outsourcing clients in the selection of offshore software outsourcing vendors. METHOD – We have performed questionnaire surveys with 53 experts. We asked the participants to rank each success factor on a five-point scale to determine the perceived importance of each success factor. Our survey included success factors identified in the previous findings of systematic literature review study. RESULTS – Our study reveal both cost-saving and appropriate infrastructure as the most influential factors in the selection of outsourcing vendors. Our results also indicate that appropriate infrastructure, cost-saving and efficient project management are common success factors across different groups of practitioners. CONCLUSIONS – Cost-saving and appropriate infrastructure should be considered as the prime factors in the selection process of software development outsourcing vendors.