Identifying and mitigating risks of software project management in global software development

Managing global software projects is a difficult task further complicated by the emergence of new risks inherent to the dispersion of stakeholders. Project managers of Global Software Development (GSD) projects deal with challenges related to geographical, temporal and socio-cultural distance. The aim of this paper is to identify mitigation strategies intended to counter partially or fully the effects of risk factors related to the management of GSD projects that are available in literature and update the list of risk factors proposed in a previous research. This study proposes a framework for the Software Risk Management (SRM) of GSD projects designed to help practitioners identify risk factors and alleviate their effects through a list of recommended mitigation strategies. Using a systematic literature review (SLR), 39 risk factors and 58 mitigation strategies were identified and classified using a framework inspired from Leavitt’s model of organizational change. Results show that the mitigation strategies identified in this SLR target 38 out of 39 risk factors, indicating a high academic interest in resolving the challenges of managing GSD projects. Results also reveal that the list of risk factors submitted in this paper and compiled using a different set of selected studies, concurs with the list introduced in a previous research. © 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.