A risk assessment model for offshoring using CMMI quantitative approach

Abstract

Risk analysis and assessment obviously provides valuable insights to offshoring projects to identify and evaluate the magnitude of risks associated with the activities and the work products being considered. In offshoring software industry, successful execution of risk analysis drastically relies on strong software process skills and management skills to resolve the differences in cultures, languages, time zones, and development which are used across distributed project teams. One way to ease such differences is to provide a model which offers a rational and automated basis for quantifying and monitoring risks and providing specific decision-making guidance while maintaining the nature of offshoring in a distributed manner. This paper presents an extension of our previous model of quantitative CMMI assessment. We further apply the best practices from the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) as a guideline for quantitative risk analysis in offshoring and using risk taxonomy from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Taxonomy-Based Risk Identification. This work aims to reduce the process overhead of risk assessment by automatically collecting data from the project management repository to adequately and appropriately determine the approximate level of risk in offshoring projects. © 2010 IEEE.