Research Design

All empirical research has a research design associated with it. Yin (2013) defines research design as “an action plan for getting from here to there”. In this research the term here is defined as a collection of research questions and there as the conclusion reached from analysing the answers to these questions. When constructing the survey, care must be taken to ensure that the research remains focused on its primary goals and objectives. Philliber, Schwab and Sloss (1980) referred to research design as the “blue print” for the research design that covers what questions are to be answered, what data is relevant, what data to collect and how to analyse the findings.

3.3.1 The components of research design

Ritchie et al (2013) identify the following components which need to be addressed when undertaking case study research:

− The questions used in the study.

− Its propositions, if any.

− The unit of analysis.

− Logic that links data to propositions.

− Criteria for interpreting the findings.

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In the following subsections, each of these components are discussed.

3.3.2 Development of the research question

The initial step in constructing effective research questions is the identification of the research objective. This has been identified in chapter 1 as follows:

To develop a comprehensive understanding of how to manage globally distributed development projects in the Middle East.

The second step is crafting the research questions by rephrasing and summarising the original research objective identified above. The research question was formally defined as follows (as mentioned in chapter 1):

How can virtual teams be effectively managed in a distributed software development environment?

The research question was expressed in general terms since this acted as a precursor to questions that are more specific. An important factor to consider when developing research questions is the fact that they should be broad enough to necessitate the uncovering of knowledge while remaining focused on the research objective. The goal of this research is to identify management practices: methods and techniques that could be used in managing globally distributed software development projects. Factors and variables that affect the successful implementation of globally distributed software development projects in the Middle East were analysed. The following research sub-questions were thus defined:

What factors contribute to the success of globally distributed software projects in the Middle East?

What are the best practices the globally distributed software development teams engage in order to ensure success of the project in the Middle East?

3.3.3 Study propositions.

Yin (2013) states that the second component of case study-based research is the development of study propositions. These propositions help the researcher to focus his/her attention on specific areas. Yin (2013) urged that there might be a valid reason for not developing a proposition before carrying out research when undertaking exploratory case study research.

He states that: “At the same time some studies may have a legitimate reason for not having

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any propositions...in which a topic is a subject of ‘exploration’”. Although there are several previous researches on global software development, limited literature exists that focuses on global software development in the Middle East. The propositions will not be developed first in order not to pre-empt the research findings. In this research the phenomenon of GSD in Middle East is studied in-depth following the interpretive tradition:

then, as one of the outcomes of this research, propositions about the management practice of GSD are suggested. These propositions can be tested in a positivist manner in future research.

3.3.4 Unit of analysis

Unit of analysis is defined as what the “case” is for a case study. It could be an individual, an event or an entity that is less well-defined than a single individual. Creswell (2013) characterises a case study as an entity or phenomenon bound by time and activity, an entity which can be based on either individual or group activities. According to Creswell (2013), a case can be defined as a “single site or location of a development team if that development was distributed across several locations” in the context of global software development. In this study, the project, distributed between at least two locations will be taken as the unit of analysis. The reason for this is to allow the researcher to have access to a broader range of data rather than to collect data from a single team. Also, it allows data to be collected without being limited to the current assigned location of the interviewee to grant a more holistic overview of each organisation.

3.3.5 Logic that links data to propositions

The fourth component of case study research design is to connect data to propositions. This linkage is done after the data collection phase, as themes emerge. As data is analysed, the researcher attempts to match patterns that appear in the data to the theoretical propositions of the case study. The themes that emerged in this study thus served as answers to the research questions identified in chapter 1.

3.3.6 Criteria for interpreting findings

The last component of case study research design is the criteria for interpreting the findings.

Commonly, the case study researcher codes the data prior to developing themes (Yin, 2013).

Following the theme development stage, we needed to carefully extract meaning from the findings to determine recommendations for practice and future research.

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3.3.7 Overview of the research process

Figure 4 gives an overview of the way in which the study was conducted. The investigation was divided into different phases and the research process occured at different times.

Figure 4: Procedural step of the study