Managing Offshore Software Projects

There has been phenomenal growth in offshore software projects during the past few decades. Most companies in highly industrialized nations like the US and the UK are moving their software development work to offshore countries like India. The advantages include lower costs, access to large software talent pool with superior IT skills and quality. However, managing offshore software projects is more difficult than projects done with local teams. Distances, different time zones, cultural differences and various offshore country-specific political, economic, infrastructure, social and legal factors pose additional challenges and complexity for software project managers and their team members. This book helps readers understand the offshore phenomenon and its benefits, challenges and critical success factors. Proper management of offshore software projects is critical in achieving various expected benefits of offshoring. This book puts together the current thought and best practices in the management of offshore software projects. The coverage includes pertinent articles written by industry practitioners and researchers on methodology, processes and collaboration tools. Well-known offshore risks are identified and risk management is discussed. Proven communication management, human resource management and quality management techniques are covered. A topic of current interest is high employee attrition in India among software professionals. It is a serious problem in most companies. Various ways to control attrition and its effects are discussed. This book is useful for software managers, software professionals, senior executives like CIOs, CTOs and other stakeholders around the globe.