Quality Determinants in Offshored IS Projects: A Comparison between Projects Completed Within-Budget and Over-Budget

Customers have shifted their focus to offshoring vendors ability to provide high quality software, in addition to the cost advantages. However, delivering projects within the budgets ensures profitability and growth of vendors. The present research highlights how meeting budget requirements is related to the impact of key determinants on software quality in offshore development projects executed by vendors. A survey of project managers engaged in off shoring at leading Indian software companies was carried out and the collected data were analysed using structural equations modelling techniques. Out of six determinants, in the case of projects completed within the budget, while process maturity is associated with functionality, reliability, usability and performance of the software and technical infrastructure is associated with reliability, maintainability, usability and performance in the case projects completed within the budget. However in the case of projects that exceeded the budget, it is found while requirements uncertainty is associated with maintainability, technical infrastructure is associated with maintainability and performance of the software.

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