Abstract
Software Outsourcing Partnership (SOP) is a client-vendor relationship focused solely on mutual trust and dedication that achieves mutually beneficial objectives. Often, a well-established outsourcing relationship may be converted into outsourcing partnerships. The development of SOP depends on various success factors. The research method attempts to solve the problem following a two-step process of Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and industrial survey with 70 experts. The results obtained are disseminated and analysed based on ‘expert level of experience’, ‘company affiliation’, and ‘expert outsourcing role’. Moreover, from a client-vendor perspective, factors are classified according to their criticality. Based on Spearman‘s correlation test (rs =0.406 and ρ = 0.040), we argue that the survey results regarding the factors are consistent with the previously published findings of the SLR. The results of this study suggest that, in rode to successfully renew or promote outgoing outsourcing ventures, outsourcing companies should address all the identified factors especially the most critical one.




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18 March 2022
Springer Nature’s version of this paper was updated due to the following: The ORCiD for Irshad Ahmed Abbasi was incorrect and should have been https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1813-1415.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thanks the participants of the survey. This work is supported by Beijing Natural Science Foundation (No. 4202066), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61972414), Beijing Nova Program (No. Z201100006820082), and Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (No. 2462020YJRC001).
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Communicated by: Sigrid Eldh and Davide Falessi
This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Software Engineering in Practice
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Appendix 4
Background of the survey participants are given in Table 18 and can be found using the following link.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LCu5stU2Mpczwhic3DuM6IHoamMHA_0d/view?usp=sharing
Appendix 5
List of finally selected articles can be found at Table 18 and can be found using the following link.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S9tou2lRz4bO7k68BvOpw85wZfA594pp/view?usp=sharing
Appendix 6: Questionnaire Sample Used for Data Collection

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Ali, S., Abbasi, I.A., Mustafa, E.E. et al. Practitioner’s view of the success factors for software outsourcing partnership formation: an empirical exploration. Empir Software Eng 27, 52 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10044-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10044-y