Globalization of software development has resulted in a rapid shift away from the traditional collocated, on-site development model, to the offshoring model. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in offshoring even in early phases like requirements analysis. Additionally, the flexibility offered by the agile development approach makes it attractive for adaptation in globally distributed software work. A question of significance then is what impacts the success of offshoring earlier phases, like requirements analysis, in a flexible and globally distributed environment? This article incorporates the stance of control theory to posit a research model that examines antecedent factors such as requirements change, facilitation by vendor and client site-coordinators, control, and computer-mediated communication. The impact of these factors on success of requirements analysis projects in a “flexible” global setting is tested using two quasi-experiments involving students from Management Development Institute, India and Marquette University, USA. Results indicate that formal modes of control significantly influence project success during requirements analysis. Further, facilitation by both client and vendor site coordinators positively impacts requirements analysis success.

The off-shore software development companies in countries such as India use a global delivery model in which initial requirement analysis phase of software projects get executed at client locations to leverage frequent and deep interaction between user and developer teams. Subsequent phases such as design, coding and testing are completed at off-shore locations. Emerging trends indicate an increasing interest in off-shoring even requirements analysis phase using computer mediated communication. We conducted an exploratory research study involving students from Management Development Institute (MDI), India and Marquette University (MU), U.S.A. to determine quality of such off-shored requirements analysis projects. Our findings suggest that project quality of teams engaged in pure off-shore mode is comparable to that of teams engaged in collocated mode. However, the effect of controls such as user project monitoring on the quality of off-shored projects needs to be studied further.

Businesses that are involved in offshore software development often operate in a virtual project environment in which peer teams located at customer premise exchange project specifications with the offshore software development facility. To understand the complex issues in such a virtual project environment during the requirements definition phase of the software development cycle, we conducted an exploratory research study, involving 24 virtual teams based in Canada and India, working on defining business requirements for software projects, over a period of five weeks. The study indicates that trust between the teams and well-defined task structure positively influence the efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction level of global virtual teams.

We consider a variant of B/sup +/-tree called the B/sup +/-tree with physical clustering (BC), which is exemplified by VSAM key-sequenced datasets. In this file, logically contiguous data buckets are physically clustered in a storage unit called a region in order to enhance the efficiency of sequential processing. As a consequence, records in a bucket are redistributed over time according to two different split algorithms: bucket split and region split. A stochastic model of the disorganization of BC files is constructed using order statistics. Database administrators of online transaction systems often need to reorganize BC files before a region split occurs. An efficient algorithm for determining the optimal reorganization time of BC files is developed. Analytic results are validated by simulation. In passing, we discuss guidelines for load-time configuration of BC files.