Towards a hypothetical framework of humans related success factors for process improvement in global software development: systematic review.
Abstract
1. INTRODUCTION Presently, the majority of the software development organizations are adopting the phenomena of Global Software Development (GSD), mainly because of the significant return on investment it produces. However, GSD is a complex phenomenon and there are many challenges associated with it, especially that related to Software Process Improvement (SPI). The aim of this work is to identify humans' related factors that can positively impact the SPI process in GSD organizations and proposed a hypothetical framework of the identified success factors in relation to SPI implementation. We have adopted the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method in order to identify the success factors. Using the SLR approach, total ten success factors were identified. The paper also reported the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for SPI implementation following the criteria of the factors having a frequency ≥ 50% as critical. Our results reveal that five out of ten factors are critical for SPI program. Based on the analysis of the identified success factors, we have presented a hypothetical framework that has highlighted an association between the identified success factors and the implementation of the SPI program in GSD environment. Software process improvement (SPI) provides an organization with a commanding means of evaluating their abilities to improve the software development process; accordingly, this practice allows organizations to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Zahran [1] defined SPI as "the discipline of defining, characterizing, improving, and measuring software management, better product innovation, faster cycle times, greater product quality, and reduced development costs simultaneously." Different standards and models for SPI have been developed, each of which assists organizations in optimizing their software processes through evaluation of process efficiency. Khan and Keung [5] mentioned that the failure rate of SP programs is 70%, and one of the ground reasons of this failure is the inadequate attention given to process improvement problems. Various process improvement models and standards have been developed in order to bring software developmen