Requirements Certification for Offshoring Using LSPCM

Requirements hand-over is a common practice in software development off shoring. Cultural and geographical distance between the outsourcer and supplier, and the differences in development practices hinder the communication and lead to the misinterpretation of the original set of requirements. In this article we advocate requirements quality certification using LSPCM as a prerequisite for requirements hand-over. LSPCM stands for LaQuSo Software Product Certification Model that can be applied by non-experienced IT assessors to verify software artifacts in order to contribute to the successfulness of the project. To support our claim we have analyzed requirements of three off shoring projects using LSPCM. Application of LSPCM revealed severe flaws in one of the projects. The responsible project leader confirmed later that the development significantly exceeded time and budget. In the other project no major flaws were detected by LSPCM and it was confirmed that the implementation was delivered within time and budget. Application of LSPCM to the projects above also allowed us to refine the model for requirements hand-over in software development off shoring.