Factors influencing vendor organizations in the selection of DevOps for global software development: an exploratory study using a systematic literature review

Abstract

This study is motivated by the apparent shortage of DevOps practices being used in global software development. DevOps is an attractive option for software development companies due to its benefits such as bridging the gap between development and operations teams, efficient software development within budget and time, reduced errors, improved product quality, faster failure identification, and faster development and deployment of new modifications. Global software development (GSD) grows extensively due to its various benefits like cost effectiveness, access to large multi-skilled workforces, reduced time to market, etc. GSD quickly becomes the norm, although it is structurally different from local Software Engineering development. DevOps becomes more challenging in GSD, due to the socio-cultural, geographically and temporal boundaries. For management DevOps activities in software organizations, frameworks, like RMDevOps, have been developed, however, this framework is insufficient in providing detailed information about the DevOps practices in GSD context. Using systematic literature review (SLR) approach, the mentioned research gap has been tried to fill in this study, by identifying the key factors and their practices that could positively impact the DevOps methods in GSD context. Total 13 success factors are identified finally by conducting SLR that could assist vendor organizations in the selection of DevOps in the GSD environment.