مطالعه مقایسه ای عوامل مهم ریسک در برون سپاری خارجی و داخلی پروژه های توسعه نرم افزار : مطالعه دو پنل دلفی

We investigated the risk factors of outsourced software development. Our first objective was to create empirically generated lists of risk factors for both domestically- and offshore-outsourced projects. Our second objective was to compare these two contexts: how do the risk factors change and which ones are most important in each. To address these objectives, we conducted two Delphi surveys to identify the important risk factors from a client perspective, in domestic and offshore settings. We qualitatively compared the results of the surveys to identify similarities and differences across their risk profiles. We identified three types of risks: those that appeared in both contexts; those that appeared in both but were exacerbated in the offshore context; and those that were unique to the offshore context. Our findings suggested that traditional project management risks were important in both contexts; however, the offshore context seemed to be more vulnerable to some traditional risks as well as factors that were unique to it.

Software project failure has been studied extensively in the IT project management literature. To address this issue, scholars have spent considerable time identifying risk factors. IT project risks frequently materialize in delays, resource overruns, and project abandonment. Such problems reduce the net benefits that a client organization reaps from the use of IT. A common method of identifying and managing risk is through the use of checklists. In the project management literature, there are a number of checklists that have been made available to help with this task (see e.g., [3]). In order to provide some sense and order to the myriad types of risks, Wallace et al. [30] categorized the risk factors along six dimensions. We employ this categorization in Table 1. These risk factors can be found in all types of IT projects.

First, though we identified the most important risk factors, we discovered no ways to manage and mitigate them. A second limitation is that the profiles were primarily project management-oriented. We believe that this result occurred for two reasons. First, the panelists were IT managers who were selected primarily for their project management experience. Thus it is not surprising that they focused on these concerns. Second, the study was based on the project management literature, which we used as a starting point in the generation of risk profiles. As a result, we did not address the long-term implications of outsourcing. A third limitation was that our research lacked a theoretical framework. Our study was exploratory in nature, and attempted to cast as wide a net as possible in identifying risk factors. A fourth limitation was that the comparisons between the two contexts was qualitative in nature.