## 2 Study Background  
The GSD phenomenon has attracted the interest of businesses all over the world. It brings together partners from various national and corporate cultures to develop applications with numerous advantages including access to a vast labor pool, cost savings and round the clock growth. GSD, on the other hand, is technologically and organizationally diverse and poses a number of obstacles for the development team, such as geographical distance, cultural differences and communication and language barriers [13]. Vendors provide services to clients by selecting one of the suitable global delivery options. The selection of an appropriate model is a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem. The literature review shows that prior studies addressed the complex problem of MCDM by using various tools, such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Analytic Network Process (ANP), Fuzzy TOPSIS, Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy Set Theory. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [14] developed a multi-criteria system based on 10 risk factors using Fuzzy logic. The proposed MCDM framework is used to handle the uncertainty involved in the selection process of vendors. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [15] presented a novel AHP-based risk assessment model using three factors, including confidentiality, availability and integrity and six sub factors for the industrial Internet of Things (IOT) cloud for the purpose of checking the health. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [16] presented a novel method based on AHP for the prioritization of requirements risks in order to identify the most critical requirement. The basic idea is the identification of critical requirements and to communicate it with team members and stakeholders. This method helps the developers and all stakeholders to know about the requirements' risks, which minimizes the rate of project failure. Similarly, the literature review showed that a number of articles presented Decision Support Systems for software, such as [PERSON] et al. [17], which proposed a Decision Support System (DSS) for the software architecture selection based on the fuzzy logic. It provides architects the suitable choices among the available architecture styles. [PERSON] et al. (2018) designed a multi-criteria decision system based on two main factors, namely economic and quality, and a number of sub factors using AHP. This was used for the selection of effective software development strategies to meet the requirements of the clients, cut down the cost and enable the company to compete in the market. [PERSON] et al. (2019) introduced a multi-criteria method based on SMARTER for assisting the experts in selection of the best-fit agile product development methodology for small and medium size companies. [PERSON] et al. (2019) integrated Fuzzy TOPSIS and Fuzzy AHP to evaluate the sustainable security of web applications. They used four main attributes, which are confidentiality, availability, integrity and perdurability, along with other sub factors. The technique was tested, and it can help researchers and developers in designing the higher sustainable and secure web applications. [PERSON] et al. (2018) used Fuzzy AHP to select the most suitable service provider for the cloud services. The criteria used in this technique are the availability, CPU, transaction cost, security, storage and performance. [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2018) adopted the Fuzzy AHP technique for the selection of software architecture style. The proposed technique helps the architects in the evaluation of the candidate architectures based on the criteria, namely portability, efficiency, reliability, maintainability, usability and functionality; and other sub factors. The most useful architectural style is chosen based on the stakeholders' requirements and viewpoints. [PERSON] et al. (2019) proposed an AHP-based technique to select a suitable agile method according to the project need and nature. The criteria that were used were dynamic requirements, requirement changes, development team and communication. Similarly, [PERSON] et al.