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Managing Geographically Distributed Clients throughout the Project Management Life Cycle

With a growing demand for software systems and increase in their complexity, software development and maintenance is no longer the preserve of individual designers and programmers. A thorough involvement of all the stakeholders, particularly that of the client, is required. Managing software projects is a difficult task when done locally, but it is even more difficult when the clients are geographically distributed as there are communication, cultural, lingual, and time-zone barriers. This paper reports a survey-based research study that identifies significant issues faced by project managers in managing geographically distributed clients during the execution of a software project. In addition to this, the paper investigates the issues that could have a significant contribution toward overall cost reduction. The findings indicate that 6 out of 12 identified issues have a significant contribution in reducing overall project cost. These are common understanding of project domain and requirements between client and development team, managing changes requested by the client, managing delays from the client side, understanding and meeting the client's definition and need ofsoftware quality, sufficientcommu-nication and involvementofclientand development team, and successfully negotiating the contracts with the client and subcontractors.