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Practitioner’s view of the success factors for software outsourcing partnership formation: an empirical exploration

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Abstract

Software Outsourcing Partnership (SOP) is a client-vendor relationship focused solely on mutual trust and dedication that achieves mutually beneficial objectives. Often, a well-established outsourcing relationship may be converted into outsourcing partnerships. The development of SOP depends on various success factors. The research method attempts to solve the problem following a two-step process of Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and industrial survey with 70 experts. The results obtained are disseminated and analysed based on ‘expert level of experience’, ‘company affiliation’, and ‘expert outsourcing role’. Moreover, from a client-vendor perspective, factors are classified according to their criticality. Based on Spearman‘s correlation test (rs =0.406 and ρ = 0.040), we argue that the survey results regarding the factors are consistent with the previously published findings of the SLR. The results of this study suggest that, in rode to successfully renew or promote outgoing outsourcing ventures, outsourcing companies should address all the identified factors especially the most critical one.

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Change history

  • 18 March 2022

    Springer Nature’s version of this paper was updated due to the following: The ORCiD for Irshad Ahmed Abbasi was incorrect and should have been https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1813-1415.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thanks the participants of the survey. This work is supported by Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 4202066), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61972414), Beijing Nova Program (No. Z201100006820082), and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (No. 2462020YJRC001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, Beijing, 102249, China

    Sikandar Ali & Jiwei Huang

  2. Department of Information Technology, The University of Haripur, Haripur, 22621, Pakistan

    Sikandar Ali & Fazli Wahid

  3. Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Arts at Belqarn University of Bisha, Sabt Al-Alaya, 61985, Saudi Arabia

    Irshad Ahmed Abbasi & Elfatih Elmubarak Mustafa

  4. Beijing Key Laboratory of Petroleum Data Mining, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, Beijing, 102249, China

    Jiwei Huang

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  1. Sikandar Ali
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  2. Irshad Ahmed Abbasi
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  3. Elfatih Elmubarak Mustafa
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  4. Fazli Wahid
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sikandar Ali or Jiwei Huang.

Additional information

Communicated by: Sigrid Eldh and Davide Falessi

This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Software Engineering in Practice

Supplementary Information

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 15 Expert’s experience based distribution of responses
Full size table

Appendix 2

Table 16 Expert’s role based distribution of responses
Full size table

Appendix 3

Table 17 Client-Vendor distribution of responses
Full size table

Appendix 4

Background of the survey participants are given in Table 18 and can be found using the following link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCu5stU2Mpczwhic3DuM6IHoamMHA_0d/view?usp=sharing

Appendix 5

List of finally selected articles can be found at Table 18 and can be found using the following link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S9tou2lRz4bO7k68BvOpw85wZfA594pp/view?usp=sharing

Appendix 6: Questionnaire Sample Used for Data Collection

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Ali, S., Abbasi, I.A., Mustafa, E.E. et al. Practitioner’s view of the success factors for software outsourcing partnership formation: an empirical exploration. Empir Software Eng 27, 52 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10044-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10044-y

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