Software Product Quality in Global Software Development: Finding Groups with Aligned Goals

The development of a software product in an organization involves various groups of stakeholders who may prioritize the qualities of the product differently. This paper presents an empirical study of 65 individuals in different roles and in different locations, including on shoring, outsourcing and off shoring, prioritizing 24 software quality aspects. Hierarchical cluster analysis is applied to the prioritization data, separately for the situation today and the ideal situation, and the composition of the clusters, regarding the distribution of the inherent groupings within each of them, is analyzed. The analysis results in observing that the roles are not that important in the clustering. However, compositions of clusters regarding the onshore-offshore relationships are significantly different, showing that the offshore participants have stronger tendency to cluster together. In conclusion, stakeholders seem to form clusters of aligned understanding of priorities according to personal and cultural views rather than their roles in software development.