Developing software globally using outsourced resources has become a common practice, with project teams often distributed in different time zones. In this study, we focus on customers that contract software development to vendors in temporally nearshore or far offshore locations. We conducted a survey to determine the effect of temporal distance on overall success, costs, project management effort, schedule, quality, communication problems, and other outcomes of interest to managers. In the survey of 80 customers and interviews with 6 of them, we also investigated the effect of software development methodology on the same outcomes. The results show that nearshore development is advantageous for overall success, quality, reduced PM effort, maintaining schedule, higher quality, and engendering fewer communication problems. Development methodology appears to only influence higher costs. We assess our findings in the context of prior GSE research and provide practical advice for customers of outsourced global software development, chief of which is to favor nearshore for communication-intensive or Agile projects.

翻译：利用外包资源进行全球软件开发已成为普遍实践，项目团队常分布于不同时区。本研究聚焦于将软件开发外包给时区近岸或远岸供应商的客户方。我们通过问卷调查探究时区距离对项目整体成功率、成本、项目管理投入、进度、质量、沟通问题及其他管理层关注结果的影响。在对80位客户的问卷调查及其中6位的深度访谈中，我们同时考察了软件开发方法论对相同结果变量的影响。研究结果表明：近岸开发在整体成功率、质量、降低管理投入、进度控制、提升质量及减少沟通问题方面具有优势；而开发方法论仅对成本增加产生显著影响。我们将研究结论置于全球软件工程研究的脉络中进行评估，并为全球软件外包客户提供实践建议，其中最重要的是建议沟通密集型或敏捷项目优先选择近岸外包。