Issues in Global Software Development: A Critical Review

A number of companies have employed Global Software Development (GSD) methodology as a useful tool for their software development practices. GSD is a contractual relationship between client and vendor organizations in which a client outsources all or some part of its software development activities to a vendor. The vendor in return provides the agreed services in lieu of certain amount of remuneration. The main reasons to select the GSD technique include reduced cost, faster development and access to skilled manpower. Though GSD is emerging as an effective technique, but it suffers from many challenges like poor communication, lack of trust and coordination. These challenges pose serious risk to the smooth execution of the GSD projects. In this paper, we present a comparative study on GSD to highlight its merits and demerits. Our findings reveal that much of the research in this area has been focused on addressing issues faced by client organizations, however, vendor side in the GSD relationship is much ignored due to which this area is still immature; and, hence, further research work is required to be undertaken to address the issues faced by the vendor organizations.