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Software Development Productivity in Different Sourcing Arrangements

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Entrepreneurship in Technology for ASEAN

Part of the book series: Managing the Asian Century ((MAAC))

Abstract

Technology entrepreneurship is critical for software development organizations to stay competitive. A good understanding about emerging technologies and processes and their suitability for software development helps organizations to manage and deliver successful projects. Software development management has to evaluate decisions about implementation of software process technologies such as generation of programming languages, software methodologies (waterfall, agile, rapid application development (RAD), joint application development (JAD) and prototyping, etc.), type of sourcing arrangement (offshore, outsource, onshore and in-house), type of projects (new and enhanced projects), etc. These decisions affect the project productivity to a large extent. This study attempts to analyze the software process technologies by testing their impact on the software development productivity in four software sourcing arrangements namely offshore, outsource, onshore, and in-house. 1819 software development projects from the International Software Benchmarking Standards Group (ISBSG) data repository are analyzed to find insightful facts about the technological and methodological factors that contribute to project productivity for each type of software sourcing phenomena. The analysis reveals that new development projects are best suited for onshore development. Waterfall development reduces productivity in case of in-house development but suitable for outsourced development. Results also show that RAD/JAD is a suitable development methodology in all types of software development sourcing. Surprisingly, agile development has a negative impact in in-house development. The study provides valuable insights for the software development organizations to make informed decisions about the software process technologies to be implemented in software development.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Accounting and Information Systems, The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Niharika Dayyala & Kallol Bagchi

  2. Information Systems and Analysis, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, USA

    Purnendu Mandal

Authors
  1. Niharika Dayyala
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  2. Kallol Bagchi
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  3. Purnendu Mandal
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Correspondence to Niharika Dayyala .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lamar University, College of Business Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas, USA

    Purnendu Mandal

  2. Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    John Vong

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Dayyala, N., Bagchi, K., Mandal, P. (2017). Software Development Productivity in Different Sourcing Arrangements. In: Mandal, P., Vong, J. (eds) Entrepreneurship in Technology for ASEAN. Managing the Asian Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2281-4_9

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