Impact of knowledge management on offshore software development: An exploratory study

In recent times, customers have shifted their focus to offshoring vendors´ ability to provide high quality software, in addition to the cost advantages. The present research highlights how knowledge management (KM) impacts through different factors on software quality in offshore development projects executed by vendors. A survey of 70 project managers engaged in offshoring at a mid size Indian Software Company was carried out and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS package. Out of seven factors considered for KM, Technical Knowledge (TK), Domain Knowledge (DK), Knowledge Sharing (KS), Organization Practices (OP), Knowledge Transfer Integration (KTI), and Leadership Coordination Practices (LCP) are associated with functionality, reliability, maintainability and usability attributes of Software Quality. However, it is found that Country Specific Requirement (CSR) is not associated with functionality, reliability and maintainability but associated with usability. Similarly, Technical Knowledge (TK) is not associated with functionality of the software.