Systematic review of success factors and barriers for software process improvement in global software development.
Abstract
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. 1 Introduction Software process improvement (SPI) is an approach used to comprehend the software process and to monitor the implementation of change in that process for the purpose of achieving the particular objectives such as to enhance software development period and budget along with the required efficiency [1]. Stelzer and Millis [2] described that SPI life cycle consists of four steps, i.e. PLAN (planning for process improvement), DO (operate the plan), CHECK (measuring the improvement) and ACT (implement the plan according to the given check). Different standards and models for SPI have been developed to move organisations towards optimising their software processes and also numerous instruments are developed to evaluate process proficiency. Capability maturity model integration (CMMI) [3] is among the SPI models that have been developed. It is a structured and systematic collection of best practices for process assessment and improvement. Moreover, the International Organisa