Client organizations benefit from offshore outsourcing because vendors in developing countries (offshore vendors) typically cost one-third less than onshore vendors and even less when compared with in-house operations [14]. Amongst many other reasons for outsourcing, generally client organizations outsource their software development work to offshore locations to gain cost and quality advantages, access to leading-edge technologies and focus on their core competencies.
Moreover, offshore vendors improve their skills and service quality with the experience of offshore outsourcing projects and by learning new ways to satisfy the clients’ needs. It is professed that offshore outsourcing vendors can add significant value to their clients’ supply chains [16]. Conversely quite apart from the outsourcing benefits there are many risks in the outsourcing process, such as temporal incompatibility, cultural differences and hidden costs [8, 17]. IT Week magazine reported that eight out of every ten firms that have outsourced their software development project to an offshore vendor have faced major problems due to insufficient preparation and poor management by both client and vendor organizations [18]. There are many reasons for these problems [18]. One of the major issues is that many clients endorse global contracts with their vendors prior to testing their project management readiness for the global activity [19]. For example, a recent Systematic Literature Review concludes that the Global Software Engineering field is still nascent and comparatively a few empirical studies have been conducted in order to provide solutions to the problems in this domain [20]. Understanding issues related to organization’s global project management readiness will help to ensure the successful outcome of projects and to maintain long lasting relationships between clients and vendors in different geographical locations [21]. Hence, in this paper we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify project management challenges in GSD projects. The collected data focus on challenges for effective project management in Global Software Development.