Intercultural challenges in offshore software development outsourcing relationships: A systematic literature review protocol

Offshore software development outsourcing (OSDO) is an emerging business approach adopted by many software development organizations in developed countries. Developing software at offshore locations has many benefits including access to large labor pool, low development cost and round-the-clock development. However, inspite of these benefits OSDO presents a variety of challenges to the software development organizations including temporal, geographical and intercultural differences. Intercultural differences cause many problems to vendors in OSDO relationships. This research seeks to identify the potential intercultural challenges faced by vendors in OSDO relationships by reviewing the literature in a systematic way. We have developed a systematic literature review (SLR) protocol, and are in the process of implementing the protocol. SLR is based on a structured protocol, and is therefore, different from ordinary literature review. SLR provides in-depth and more thorough results than ordinary literature review. The expected outcomes of this review will be the identification of intercultural challenges or barriers faced by vendor organisations in the establishment and maintenance of OSDO relationships.