Strategy models for enabling offshore outsourcing: Russian short-cycle-time software development
✍ Scribed by Jan Pries-Heje; Richard Baskerville; Galina Ianshina Hansen
- Publisher
- Taylor and Francis Group
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 166 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0268-1102
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Economic factors are driving software development projects onto globally dispersed models, as offshore outsourcing becomes more common. Software development companies in developing economies compete for lucrative, job-creating offshore contracts on the basis of industry maturity, labor skills, technology infrastructure, and government support. Diffusion of technology is a key aspect of each of these determinants of competitiveness. This paper analyzes the development of strategies for the diffusion of short-cycle-time software development into and within Russia. Short-cycle-time development is sometimes called agile development or Internet-speed development and uses a number of techniques to move software quickly into production. These techniques are spreading rapidly among software developers worldwide. The benefits of these techniques are well known and provide a credible explanation for why this rapid diffusion is occurring. This paper explains how these techniques are spreading in a borderless fashion. Using the Kline model of innovation diffusion and the Greiner model of evolution and growth of organizations, we analyze the enablers and barriers to diffusion of short-cycle-time software development techniques in Russia. This analysis reveals a complex interaction of political, economic, and technical elements enabling and inhibiting the development of knowledge that supports the innovation diffusion necessary for companies to compete for offshore contracts.