PRIORITIZED RISKS AND TREATMENT STRATEGIES IN GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT (GSD)

Abstract

The study conducts a review for the literature in order to compile the risks that are directly related to the GSD strategy. The case study adopts a Delphi methodology that allows the researcher to achieve consensus on the most relevant and critical risks associated with the GSD project. Twenty software development experts from all around the world participated in the study, with a minimum of fifteen expert in each Delphi round. The four rounds of the Delphi method used in this study are designed to gain consensus on the most crucial risks of the GSD strategy, as well as perform a risk assessment for all the risks compiled from the literature and verified by the participating experts. The results show that there are ten main risks that gained consensus by software development experts and need to be addressed as a priority in GSD projects, where all of them have medium to high probability of occurrence and impact on the software project success using a GSD strategy.