Analysis of Research Report: IT Project Management, MITS5001

This report provides a critical analysis of a research paper focusing on project management strategies for global software development. The analysis examines the research's purpose, content, methodology (systematic literature review and empirical survey), and findings, including the identification of key success factors such as organizational structure, project manager skills, and team collaboration. The report also addresses the challenges and limitations of the research, such as the scope of the literature review and the generalizability of the survey results. The research highlights the significance of communication, coordination, and cultural awareness in global software projects and proposes a framework aligned with global project standards. The analysis concludes by emphasizing the importance of these factors for project managers to design effective strategies and mitigate potential issues, ultimately ensuring project success. The report also includes the references used in the research.

Running head: ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
Name of student
Name of university
Author’s note:

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Discussion:.................................................................................................................................2
The purpose and content:.......................................................................................................2
The research method:.............................................................................................................3
Research findings:..................................................................................................................3
Problems or issues:.................................................................................................................4
Discussion on result:..............................................................................................................4
Conclusion and relevance of the research:.............................................................................5
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................5
References:.................................................................................................................................7

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
Introduction:
The research paper discusses project management strategies for global software development.
The research paper will be reviewed in critical review format that is to analyse and construct
the findings of the research with information provided in relevant literatures. Therefore, at
first an overview of the article will be conducted for identifying the background and intent of
the research. This will help in identifying the approach that the authors have considered for
this research. After a detailed overview of the research paper, the research method will be
analysed, which is an important aspect of any research and helps in analysing the credibility
and quality of the research. Along with this analysis of the research findings will be
considered as this is of prime importance for critical review of any research paper. Some
other aspects of this critical review includes review of research challenges and issues
described by the authors, discussion on experiments if considered and results obtained from
it, and importance and relevance of this research as well.
Discussion:
The purpose and content:
The aim of the research paper is identification of the factors that ensures successful project
management for software development in global standard. The research paper also makes it
clear that mapping the identified factors from the research with the 10 project knowledge
areas described in the PMBOK, is also an important aspect of this research paper.
The issues of global software development in the article are categorized into three categories
which are related to culture, coordination and communication [1]. The reason for
coordination issues according to the article is that developers are sourced from different
geographical and cultural background. The main issues that affects communication in
software projects are differences in language, terminology and culture as well. The main
reason for cultural differences is introduction of different corporate cultures in the project.
Although the authors has provided description of the issues, they have also prioritized these
issues in terms of its impact on the project execution. Even though all of these issues are
important to analyse, but issues of communication is most significant [2]. If proper
communication is ensured then it is easier to enhance coordination between the team
members and allow for incorporating different cultures into the project as well.

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
The research paper in reference to these issues has provided a framework that is compatible
with the global project standards. The research paper has provided a detailed description of
the factors with reference to the project management knowledge areas and also described
how project managers should define strategies for incorporating this framework for ensuing
that the execution of the project is effective and efficient as well.
The research method:
The research method that are considered by the authors are systematic literature review and
empirical survey.
Through the systematic literature review the authors have tried to identify issues in the global
software projects. Along with this the authors have reviewed previous researches conducted
in this context and how those research contributed in providing solutions for the issues in the
software development projects of global standard. Another important aspect of this
systematic literature review is to identify research gap and provide original approaches to
solve those issues that were not identified in the previous researches. Along with this the
authors have also conducted an empirical survey to validate the research findings as the
research paper aims to provide some original approaches to solve issues related to the
software development projects of global standard.
The combination of systematic literature review along with the empirical survey has
enhanced the authenticity and quality of the research.
Research findings:
Most of the companies are considering adoption of GSD for reducing cost for developing
software and increase its quality as well. Vendors are finding its challenging in sourcing
software development projects due to increase in competition [3]. Due to the popularity of the
GSD, the research has analysed success factors of project management and also analysed how
those success factors should be incorporated into the global software development projects.
After conducting the systematic literature review and survey, the research has identified that
structure of the organization, skills of project managers and collaboration within the project
teams, are most commonly mentioned factors for success in the project. A t-test was
conducted for statistically correlating data from the systematic literature review and the
empirical survey. There is a positive correlation between these two data sets, ranks obtained
from the systematic literature review was positively correlated with the ranks obtained from
the empirical survey regarding the most important factors for ensuring success in the project.

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
Total 18 factors were identified in this context of which 3 factors are most frequently cited
both in the systematic literature review and in the empirical survey as well. These factors as
already described are structure of the organization, skills of project managers and
collaboration within the project teams. Therefore, project managers should consider these
factors while executing software projects according to the framework for global software
development strategies described in the research in this context.
Problems or issues:
In order to conduct the literature review, the authors have only considered five database for
sourcing research papers, however there are other databases as well which the authors have
not considered and therefore it is possible some relevant research articles might have been
missed which might have compromised quality of literature review. For literature survey,
construct validity was considered and one limitation of construct validity was that
practitioners interpret success factors in different way and considering that aspect into the
research was challenging. However, there was no evidence for this limitation and no issues
were described by anyone in this regard, which made this research even more challenging.
Another challenge that was identified by the authors was generalization of the research
findings due to small numbers of participants from client organization who took part in the
survey and therefore further research should be conducted in this context.
Discussion on result:
In the research result, the most and least significant success factors for ensuring success in the
projects are described. The factors that were cited in the literatures frequently with a citation
frequency of greater than 50% or factors for which provided responses were more than 50%
were considered most important for ensuing success in the projects.
The result from the systematic literature review are the followings:
 Organizational structure (62%)
 Project manager skills (58%)
 Communication (54%)
The result from the survey is the following:
 Collaboration (54%)
 Communication (83%)
 Cultural awareness (72%)

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
 Organizational structure (52%)
 Project managers' skills (74%)
 Requirement specification (63%)
 Roles and responsibilities (59%)
 Team commitment and structure (54%)
 Training (52%)
 Trust building (54%)
After the most as well as least important factors were identified an estimation was done for
the rank-based correlation through spareman correlation. The values of the coefficients for
the correlation are rs = 0.641 and a p-value = 0.004. This implies that the factors which were
identified as most important factors were almost similar to the factors that were obtained in
the survey.
Conclusion and relevance of the research:
Software development projects, especially projects of global standard are often complex to
implement [4]. Therefore, it is important to identify issues in these projects to define
strategies for ensuring success in the project. However, only identification of issues are not
enough, strategies are also required for ensuring that these issues are properly mitigated so
that it does not affect the execution of the project [5]. This research has provided a detailed
description of the issues in the global software projects and also prioritized these issues in
terms of its impact on the project. Therefore, it helps project managers to design strategies for
the project according to the importance of the identified issues and ensure success in the
project.
Conclusion:
The issues of global software development are related to culture, coordination and
communication. According to the systematic literature review and the survey, the research
has identified that structure of the organization, skills of project managers and collaboration
within the project teams, are most important factors for success in the project. A t-test was
conducted to correlate data from the systematic literature review and the empirical survey.
Total 18 factors were recognized of which these 3 factors are most frequently cited both in
the systematic literature review as well as in the empirical survey. A rank-based correlation

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
through spareman correlation was also done and this provided positive correlation between
the data from the systematic literature review and from the survey as well.

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ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH REPORT
References:
[1]M. Niazi, S. Mahmood, M. Alshayeb, A. Qureshi, K. Faisal and N. Cerpa, "Toward
successful project management in global software development", International Journal of
Project Management, vol. 34, no. 8, pp. 1553-1567, 2016. Available:
10.1016/j.ijproman.2016.08.008.
[2]M. Jørgensen, "Failure factors of small software projects at a global outsourcing
marketplace", Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 92, pp. 157-169, 2014. Available:
10.1016/j.jss.2014.01.034.
[3]F. Calefato, F. Lanubile, T. Conte and R. Prikladnicki, "Assessing the impact of real-time
machine translation on multilingual meetings in global software projects", Empirical
Software Engineering, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 1002-1034, 2015. Available: 10.1007/s10664-015-
9372-x.
[4]S. Sundararajan, M. Bhasi and K. Pramod, "Managing Software Risks in Maintenance
Projects, from a Vendor Perspective", International Journal of Information Technology
Project Management, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 35-54, 2017. Available: 10.4018/ijitpm.2017010103.
[5]M. Niazi, A. Hroub, M. Alshayeb and S. Mahmood, "Empirical investigation of the
challenges of the existing tools used in global software development projects", IET Software,
vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 135-143, 2015. Available: 10.1049/iet-sen.2014.0130.