Improving management of outsourced software projects in Pakistan

To be successful in the tough competitive market, businesses should be exceptionally good in worth, timeliness and accuracy; especially in the case of software outsourcing in Pakistan. With the advent of quality system standards, outsourcing firms and the outsourcers need to achieve certain objectives regarding the quality of software. Software projects developed in Pakistan still exceed the planned budget and fall behind schedule resulting in low customer satisfaction primarily because of project management issues. In current economic crisis of Pakistan, the failure of outsourced software projects cannot be afforded at all. Effective project management and collaborative efforts of government and software professionals can make Pakistan a highly desirable field for software outsourcing. In this paper the current practices about project management knowledge areas and their applicability to outsourced projects in local software industry are reviewed. Weak areas in management are identified and measures are proposed to successfully manage outsourced software projects.