Problems with quality using the analytical hierarchy approach, vendors’ perspective on software outsourcing priorities

The primary objective of software companies is to maintain product quality and competitiveness in the market while minimizing development costs. Outsourcing can be a strategic approach to achieving this goal. However, outsourcing also presents various challenges that can impact product quality. Despite extensive research on outsourcing, comprehensive discussions on challenges remain limited to the literature on outsourcing; there is a significant gap in comprehensive discussions on these challenges. This article aims to bridge this gap by identifying and prioritizing quality challenges in outsourcing using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. Through a thorough literature review, we identified challenges such as cultural differences, requirement analysis, remoteness, communication, and collaboration issues (5-C’s), and linguistic skills. We then validated these challenges through an empirical survey with software experts. A worldwide survey was conducted, garnering 80 responses from diverse geographical locations: Asia (37), Europe (26), North America (15), and Australia (2). Finally, we applied the AHP technique to prioritize these challenges, categorizing them into various levels. According to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) analysis, the ‘Requirement Analysis Challenge’ emerges as the foremost quality challenge, followed closely by ‘Lack of Expertise’ and ‘Limited Technical Capability’, ranking second and third respectively among the 12 identified challenges. We believe that the findings of this article will provide valuable insights for the vendor community, software development teams, client organizations, or project managers enabling them to better address outsourcing challenges and improve product quality.