A decision tool to support strategy selection for software development outsourcing

Software development organizations are among an increasing number of companies turning to outsourcing as a strategy to improve cost control, product quality, product development schedule reduction, and focus on core business activities. Outsourcing consultants promise all of these benefits and more, but nearly thirty percent of all outsourcing relationships end in dissatisfaction. In response, several authors have published suggestions for successfully using outsourcing to meet goals. These suggestions are based on anecdotal consulting experience and do not clearly identify whether those experiences are relevant to specific domains or organizational goals.; This research effort expands upon the anecdotal software outsourcing literature by employing a broad survey to identify the types of outsourcing strategies, their applicability to specific project scenarios, and their abilities to achieve project and organizational goals. The specific project scenario variables represent the drivers that determine whether outsourcing strategies are successful. Success is defined in terms of organizational and project goals. The factors and historical experience data were combined to produce a framework and yielded guidelines or rules. The rules, in turn, were used to construct a decision support tool to aid software development project managers and consultants in making their outsourcing strategy decisions for specific projects.