Systematic literature review of critical barriers to software outsourcing partnership

Software Outsourcing Partnership (SOP) is a type of an alliance based on sharing benefits and risks between client and vendor. SOP is an emerging outsourcing model and is different to ordinary software development arrangement. Generally, a profitable outsourcing relationship might be a candidate to be converted to SOP. Since SOP is popular and has great potential. However, many barriers prevent it from reaching its maximal potential. Consequently, making a systematic literature review on such barriers is potentially beneficial. The main target of intended study is to find a list of barriers those are deliberated obstacles for vendors in the transformation of their surviving contract based outsourcing association to an outsourcing partnership. In this article, we have presented a novel protocol using systematic literature review process. The results are based on broad literature review and comparisons. A total of twenty-six barriers were identified, twelve barriers were considered as critical barriers (CBs). Software development outsourcing vendors should address all the listed barriers particularly the CBs in order to move up from vendor to partner.