An Empirical Study of Offshore Software Development: the Case of a Ticketing Application

This is an industry report about a software development project that included a local team and an offshore team. Both teams contained highly qualified experts who had been selected before the project start up. After a year, which could be deemed as a break-in period, the project leaders observed that the quality and quantity of the software modules produced by the two teams were not up to expectation while costs had gone up. The manage- ment monitored the performance of the two groups by analysing the tests undertaken to ensure correctness of the modules. They reached the conclusion that the project failure was influenced by cultural differences between the onshore and offshore teams. The management became convinced that the current work-organization prevented knowledge delivery and knowledge acquisition, so they established a new organization as the solution to this problem. A rapid validation of the new work arrangement convinced all the involved experts that the diagnosis was right.