Performance Criteria in Inter-Organizational Global Software Development Projects

Clear and well aligned performance criteria are fundamentally important in global software development projects. We found significant diversity in performance criteria between different projects done by a single company. The performance criteria were clear and aligned in simpler projects, whereas there was a lot of ambiguity in performance criteria in complex projects. The clarity of the performance criteria seems to have a positive effect on the project performance. Meeting the end-user needs was identified as a key performance criterion, and was often not properly covered in the project requirements or in explicit performance criteria. Long term view to project performance and management of expectations between the teams has an effect to project performance. Our research is based on a study of 18 inter-organizational software development projects in Nokia Corporation during 2006.