Global software development has changed the overall software development practices. It has introduced various new software development processes and methodologies. A new generation of processes has increasingly replaced the traditional software engineering practices. Emerging practices such as agile based methodologies, software process tailoring, process improvement and management approaches have gained much attention during the recent years. Software engineering researchers have produced a number of good quality works in such areas. In this paper, a review of major contributions of the researchers on various aspects of software development processes is presented. Specifically, the analysis on different approaches of process improvement and tailoring is critically discussed in the paper. This research provides guidelines to the researchers on future research directions. The research emphasizes on the need of industry oriented practical approaches of software development to meet the challenges of global software development. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.