Challenges in customer-supplier relationship management in bespoke software development: a survey

Bespoke software development needs the engaged involvement of customers in each phase of the development life cycle, as the client's perspective and contribution are essential to the success of the project. At present, most of the software houses that work on commissioned supply adopt agile methodologies in the intent of achieving customer loyalty and of lowering time to market. Frequently however, the relationship between customers and suppliers may be undermined by a range of latent factors whose detection should need thorough attention and mitigation to keep the project afloat. Such problems as domain language barriers, unclear definition of scope, requirements, milestones and responsibilities, passive and defensive attitude in place of collaborative approaches, and different levels of expertise between teams and customers, may all spawn divergence in scope, loss of quality, and incorrect estimations. This work presents a survey that investigates the main factors of influence on breakages in the relationship between customers and suppliers, addressing the perspectives of the two sides of the fence.