Modeling coordination in offshore software development

In this paper we present our research-in-progress related to modeling coordination costs in offshore software development. Drawing from data collected on 130 software construction cycles in 34 large projects of a leading offshore development firm, we present our analysis on how coordination costs relate to team organization factors and complexity of evolving software. We base our analytic model of coordination costs in offshore software development on these empirical relationships, and give an overview of our modeling approach. We plan to develop the full analytical model focusing on deriving optimal policies for resource allocation between onsite and offshore teams. Our modeling approach will also help us develop a dynamic coordination policy to aid iterative software development.