| In today's global environment, information systems are indispensable as they enable the coordination of the activities of companies. However, successful systems (those that satisfy users' requirements, that are on time and within budget) are not easy to come by. The variations in business environments, cultures, resources, technical infrastructures, and regulations in different countries exacerbate the problems of system development that are being experienced in the domestic context.;The information systems (IS) executive has many global system development strategies to choose from in satisfying a global system requirement. In addition to the known domestic challenge of choosing in-house development, outsourcing, or package software adoption, a global system provides tougher challenges. Questions such as how to get support from subsidiaries for the system; how and who should go about gathering the information requirements from subsidiaries (or even whether to gather requirements from subsidiaries); who should build the system (if it is to be built); should an existing domestic application be changed to accommodate global requirements or should a separate system be built or acquired; what code should be common and what should be local, etc., are waiting to be answered. However, the choices are not always clear cut. Unfortunately, due to the newness of the topic, global IS literature is not much help either. Research on global software development strategies consists mostly of anecdotes and contemplations.;Empirical evidence to this area is provided in this dissertation through six case studies. The reasons for selecting a development strategy and the advantages and disadvantages of these strategies are also discussed. The global information system development strategies identified in this study are as follows: (1) Development with a multinational design team; (2) Insourced parallel development; (3) Central development; (4) Best-infirm software adoption; (5) Outsourced custom development; (6) Core versus local development; (7) Joint development with a Vendor; (8) Unmodified package software acquisition; and (9) Modified package software acquisition. The case studies provide insight to eight of these strategies; none of the projects studied used 'Best-in-firm software adoption strategy'. |
