An exploration of FMCDM approach for evaluating the outcome/success of GSD projects

Abstract

This study presents a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (FMCDM) approach for analyzing the influential factors affecting the outcome/success of global software development (GSD) projects. The main aim of this study is to demonstrate the potential of proposed methodology based on FMCDM which is used to measure the offshore/onsite teams' partnership quality dimensions and underlying the influential factors towards the outcome of GSD projects. The uncertainty and subjective vagueness within the decision making process are dealing with fuzzy linguistic terms quantified in an interval scale [0,1]. The proposed FMDCM framework is used to determine the priority weights of partnership quality factors and rating the GSD project outcome/success from the service provider perspective into three dimensions: service quality, schedule and cost improvement. The predicted GSD project outcome values are obtained to facilitate organization and to determine the impact of offshore/on-site teams' partnership quality towards success of GSD project outcome otherwise initiate actions to improve the GSD project outcome. This study established survey research method that involves thirty-eight critical influential factors evaluated by twenty software professionals for their assessment of GSD projects outcome in India.

Integration of fuzzy DEMATEL and FMCDM approach for evaluating knowledge transfer effectiveness with reference to GSD project outcome

“…Researchers have explored FMCDM for the evaluation of multiple criteria and especially to handle uncertainty and subjective vagueness within the decision-making process for a wide variety of applications via the fuzzy set theory [4,[25][26][27][28]. Therefore, this research extends FMCDM approach to the evaluation of GSD teams' effectiveness of knowledge transfer with reference to the outcome of GSD project in software service outsourcing context; this is consistent with earlier studies.…”

“…The FMCDM approach helps the decision makers to select, evaluate and rank problems according to their weights of a finite set of criteria [4]. Researchers have explored FMCDM for the evaluation of multiple criteria and especially to handle uncertainty and subjective vagueness within the decision-making process for a wide variety of applications via the fuzzy set theory [4,[25][26][27][28].…”

“…Hence this study has given insight into the relationship between ICT and knowledge transfer effectiveness of GSD teams for ensuring a successful outcome of project goals. Moreover, the earlier studies have stated that organizational elements are central aspects for making effective knowledge transfer [4,5,8,[21][22][23][24]. This implies focusing on organizational structure characteristics for GSD teams in order to perform knowledge related tasks addressed in this study.…”

“…GSD is primarily an outsourcing technique in which the on-site teams' work involved in the client location, understanding and auditing the client requirements, whereas, the offshore teams operating at different regions, execute the requirements based on the inputs provided by the on-site teams [1]. Prior studies have emphasized the impact of knowledge transfer success in information system (IS) outsourcing [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Previous research has defined knowledge transfer as: ''a process of exchange of explicit or tacit knowledge between two agents, during which one agent purposefully receives and uses the knowledge provided by another'' [7].…”

A fuzzy DEMATEL approach based on intuitionistic fuzzy information for evaluating knowledge transfer effectiveness in GSD projects

“…Since, many of our related works [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,18] have emphasized the impact of knowledge transfer success in the Information System (IS) outsourcing. Consistent with earlier studies, this paper investigated the offshore/onsite teams KT effectiveness in GSD projects.…”