A Review of Critical Success Factors for Offshore Software Development Projects

Offshore project success is very much important to both customer and the vendor. Based on very less success rate of overall software projects globally, critical success factors (CSFs) for offshore software projects is gaining much importance. In the current study based on literature review, a total of 75 success factors for offshore software projects are identified. Further based on their appearance in literature 20 critical success factors from 10 CSF categories are identified. Finally top six most critical success factors for offshore software projects such as trust, efficient communication, cultural understanding, relationship between client and vendor, contract type and efficient knowledge transfer are identified. The CSFs categories are prioritized in the order of importance. The important CSF categories for offshore projects found are organizational factors (both client and vendor), project factors, cultural factors and environmental factors