Quality Issues in Global Software Development

Abstract — The most advantageous features of Global Software Development (GSD) are its cost saving benefits and the easily availability of resources. Also the technological advancement especially in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) makes GSD a common practice in software industry. But GSD is also facing a lot of challenges. Maintaining quality in software development processes and products in GSD environments is one of the major challenges. This paper presents a survey on the challenges and factors which impact on the quality of the products in GSD environments. This report identifies that most of the factors which affect the quality of software product appear as part of two major challenges: requirements and coordination. We further demonstrate that how these two challenges are affected by several factors. Finally, we present the possible solution to reduce the complexity of those various factors. Keywords-Global Software Development; process quality; product quality; requirement and coordination challenges. I