Influencing factors in outsourced software maintenance (original) (raw)
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Outsourcing of software life cycle activities is a growing business area in many sectors influenced by Information Technologies. This fact, coupled with the usual lack of planning and high costs of software maintenance, may invite many organizations to outsource this important process of the software life cycle. Such outsourcing should be relied to a "technological associate" who can carry out this process using an adequate methodological foundation. In this paper we present the outsourcing strategy that we have integrated in MANTEMA, a methodology for software maintenance developed by our university and Atos ODS, a multinational organization which provides software maintenance services to third-party organizations.
Software Maintenance: Challenges and Issues and Models for Reducing the Maintenance Cost
International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 2017
Software maintenance is a very tedious and vital job in software development life cycle (SDLC). In today’s ever growing technological market outsourcing is done for best product delivery as well high efficiency. The outsourcing companies usually deliver a completed model to the company or user and further evolution or changes are done according to the requests made, these evolution or changes comes under Software Maintenance. Software maintenance is basically the modification done to assure a quality product after it is sent to the company or user who ordered it. This paper discovers the current models and strategies taken up by most of the leading companies for software maintenance and handling. It also explores the common challenges faced and its mitigation strategies. The preventive strategies are then discussed to help reduce for the issues faced by companies so as to overcome the overhead cost after delivering the product. The model/framework and strategies will explain the wor...
Eliciting Theory of Software Maintenance Outsourcing Process: A Systematic Literature Review
Paper, 2018
Software maintenance outsourcing (SMO) is cost-effective for developed countries and a good source of getting valuable remuneration package for developing countries. The objective of this paper is to elicit the challenges from the literature and to propose an SMO process model to handle these challenges. We used the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) protocol for the identification of SMO process-related publications in the existing literature. We found 45 studies addressing software maintenance outsourcing challenges with their remedies. We have proposed an SMO Process Model / Framework consisting of five practices with their related activities, roles, work products, method, and guidelines. We found that most of the existing literature describes the SMO processes at a general level and does not prescribe a sequence of SMO process activities. There is a need for industrial feedback on the applicability of the proposed SMO Process Model / Framework.
IEEE Access, 2021
Global Software Development (GSD) has been an emerging trend in the development of software globally, for the last two decades. Information Technology (IT) outsourcing includes application development, application maintenance, infrastructure management and business process outsourcing. Software maintenance aims to keep the IT system operational and to fulfill the client requirements. The maintenance is considered the longest phase of software life cycle that consumes about 60-70% of the total software budget. Maintenance of software is not only time consuming but also requires a significant human resources' ratio. Mostly, software acquisition and maintenance consume a big portion of the total IT budget. The current study aims to evaluate the findings of the systematic literature review and to derive a list of critical success factors regarding offshore outsourcing decision of application maintenance. Thus, an empirical study is performed to validate the influencing factors that were identified by using systematic literature review. These factors are further validated by 93 outsourcing experts from 30 different countries. The collected data through online survey is analyzed based on variables such as respondents experience level, respondents' locations (continents), experts' positions. Similarly, the data is analysed based on Chi square test (linear by linear association) and Spearman Rank Correlation. Additionally, the identified factors through survey and systematic literature review are ranked by two different methods. Consequently, a project assessment model is proposed, based on the critical success factors for the sourcing decision of application maintenance.
Best Practices in Software Maintenance Projects
ABSTRACT Maintenance of software projects is an important phase in software engineering. However, there are many challenges associated during this maintenance phase, including technical and managerial. In order to reduce the cost of maintaining software project, many such projects are being outsourced to low cost development countries like India, Philippines, Russia or China. This paper talks about decision parameters for outsourcing maintenance projects. However, outsourced maintenance projects have their own issues and challenges such as poor domain knowledge, lack of understanding of application & technological knowledge and managerial issues such as lack of motivation, attrition. To find solution to these issues, the research conducted study in CMM level 5 organizations and based on case studies, developed an approach for addressing these issues and challenges successfully. The best practices so identified such as training the trainer, process oriented systematic approach, developing a test strategy and involving end users during execution can be adopted in other organizations as well. It was observed that the best practices improved productivity while reducing defects in the deliverables.
IJCSNS, 2022
The process of correcting, upgrading, and improving software products after they have been handed over to the consumer is known as software maintenance. Offshore software maintenance outsourcing (OSM O) clients benefit from cost savings, time savings, and improved quality software through OSM O. In most circumstances, the OSM O vendor makes a lot of money but not in all the cases. Especially, when the OSM O project offer is not properly assessed. An efficient outsourcing contract might yield successful outcomes for outsourced projects. But before sending a detailed proposal to bid on the OSM O project the vendor must have to assess the client's project (business offer) requirements. The purpose of this study is to find out common trends within the assessment of a OSM O project. A case study approach along with semi-structured interviews from eight companies concluded ten common practices and several roles. Among these practices, four (code structure, requirements, communication barriers and required infrastructure) were consistent amongst the responses. The findings, limitations and future work are discussed.
Making the Sourcing Decision of Software Maintenance and Information Technology
IEEE Access
Outsourcing has been getting a significant growth for the last few years. Organizations tend to outsource Information Technology (IT), primarily to take advantage of the availability of qualified, trained and skilled workforce in low cost countries across the globe. Outsourcing of IT and software maintenance seem very promising, but a number of factors, risks, and challenges associated with the outsourcing process that make the sourcing decision very complicated. The present study aimed at gaining in-depth understanding of the three aspects of outsourcing, namely; perceived benefits of IT outsourcing, influencing factors of IT outsourcing and software maintenance offshoring. The findings of the current study will lead us to develop a sourcing framework for outsourcing decision as well as a decision support system for software maintenance. A systematic literature review is performed that presents perceived benefits of IT outsourcing, the influencing factors of IT outsourcing and software maintenance. Furthermore, the identified factors are analyzed based on their occurrences in literature as well as chi square test is performed to derive the significant differences amongst the factors based on decades. Similarly, critical success factors are derived both for IT outsourcing and software maintenance offshoring. Our article shows that how the critical success factors impact the IT as well the software maintenance in global delivery perspective. The findings of the current study will help the IT experts and decision makers in making suitable sourcing decisions.
Analyzing Factors That Influence Offshore Outsourcing Decision of Application Maintenance
IEEE Access
Application maintenance consumes a considerable amount of an organization's time and resources each year. Almost 60% of IT budget is spent alone on application maintenance. The reason of offshore outsourcing of application maintenance is not only the reduction of maintenance cost but to free up the resources and to keep the focus on core products. Offshore outsourcing is a common business strategy that is used by companies to achieve cost savings about 20-50%. However, the decision making process of application maintenance is a complex phenomenon. It is based on a set of influencing factors, clients' requirements and nature of the project. Hence, the current study is aimed at the in-depth investigation of the complex sourcing decision process of application maintenance. Accordingly, a systematic literature review is performed to determine the influencing factors and critical success factors that will be used by the decision makers for the evaluation of projects before making the outsourcing decisions. A total of 15 influencing factors out of 52 selected papers were identified. Based on the defined criteria, amongst the identified factors, only 10 factors were ranked as critical success factors, which are employees' skills, cost, legal requirements, infrastructure, communication, knowledge transfer, maturity level, project management, language barrier and frequent requirements changes. Consequently, a sourcing model was proposed based on the identified critical success factors that help the IT managers and domain experts in making appropriate outsourcing decisions. INDEX TERMS Application maintenance, critical success factors, influencing factors, offshoring, outsourcing, outsourcing decisions.
Towards Offshore Software Maintenance Outsourcing Process Model
Paper, 2020
Software maintenance outsourcing (SMO) is performed from developed countries to developing countries to gain different advantages like reducing the cost and securing time to pay attention to research and development of new products. This process of outsourcing between two (or more) different countries is called offshore software maintenance outsourcing. Both client and vendor face different kinds of problems during the execution of offshore software maintenance outsourcing (OSMO). In literature, a considerable contribution exists for software development outsourcing but OSMO is still an under-researched activity. This study aims to propose an OSMO process model. The proposed OSMO process model will address the problems of both client and vendor in the OSMO context. It is expected that the proposed an OSMO process model will help both the client and vendor organizations to make the OSMO services a success story
The Impact of Software Quality on Maintenance Process
2010
The software is always required to be developed and maintained a quality to the rapid progresses in industry, technology, economy, and other fields. Software maintenance is considered as one of the main issues in software development life cycle that is required efforts and resources more than other phase. Studies estimated that the cost of software maintenance rapidly increased that reached the 90% of the total cost of software development life cycle. Therefore, it is considered as an economic impact in information system community. Several researches are intended to estimate and reduce the cost of this task.