Outsourcing location selection with SODA: A requirements based decision support methodology and tool

Abstract

This paper seeks to address the decision making problem in software development outsourcing scenarios in which a project manager is in charge of deciding about which software components will be outsourced and which ones will be developed internally. Therefore we propose a methodology and tool support which leverage the classification of a project's software components by means of a graph-based model of the components' requirements and their corresponding clustering. In the course of our design oriented research approach, a prototypical implementation of the methodology has been developed and evaluated. It illustrates the practical applicability of the proposed method. We thereby contribute to the location selection problem in distributed software projects and give guidance for in-house or external software production. The theoretical contribution consists of revealing an improved processing methodology for assessing software requirements and increasing the outsourcing success of a software project. Our contribution for practice is an implemented prototype for project leads of distributed teams. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.