Empirical investigation of success factors for establishing software outsourcing partnership from vendor’s perspective

Software outsourcing partnership (SOP) is a trustful relationship between client and vendor organisations for shared goals. A SOP is different than ordinary software development outsourcing relationship. Usually a successful outsourcing relationship may lead to SOP. Software companies currently use a wide variety of mechanisms to outsource software development work. Besides all, SOP is an emerging strategy. The overarching target of this research paper is to find and analyse those factors that are considered significant for vendors in conversion of their existing outsourcing contractual relationship to partnership. In this paper an empirical study has been conducted and the results are distributed and analysed based on „expert job location‟ and „company size‟. We have executed a questionnaire based survey with 35 experts from different software companies. The participants were questioned to rank prominence of critical success factors (CSFs) on a seven point likert scale. We have find out 26 success factors including the CSFs like, „organisational proximity‟ „mutual trust‟, „effective and timely communication‟, „flexible service level agreements (FSLA)‟, „bidirectional transfer of knowledge (BTK)‟, „mutual interdependence and shared values‟, „quality production‟ and „3C (coordination, cooperation and collaboration)‟ that generally impact in conversion of the existing contract based outsourcing relationship to a partnership based relationship. Vendors should address all of the identified success factors, specifically the CSFs in order to attain partner position with their clients in software development outsourcing business.