Strategies Facilitating Software Product Transfers

Globalization of software work has become common in today's market. As part of cost-reduction strategies, many product-focused software companies started shipping their product development to insourcing and outsourcing offshore locations. Unfortunately, moving software products from one site to another isn't always a good business strategy for either the organization or the product. In this article, the authors discuss findings from studying software insourcing transfers at Ericsson, a large software product development company headquartered in Sweden. Their findings suggest that certain product, personnel, and process characteristics can facilitate the execution of an offshore insourcing transfer. On the basis of research conducted together with the company, they share a list of critical factors alleviating transfer difficulties and seven strategies facilitating transition of software work across sites.