Global Software Development

With the rapid increase in offshore outsourcing of software development, Global Software Development (GSD) has become the need of the hour. This, in turn, necessitates preparing computer science students to face the challenges associated with GSD. Today’s information technology, in the form of communication networks and tooling opportunities, provides us with a supposedly ready infrastructure to support GSD. However, selecting an appropriate combination of open source tools that cross cultural boundaries and account for unique in-country connectivity situations is not a trivial task. In this paper, we describe our experience of evolving an infrastructure for student GSD projects over a period four years, culminating in an environment to accommodate the needs of five different teams from four globally dispersed universities in countries straddling many technological divides.

The overall purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the fact that familiarization in distributed teams improve performance? The level of team familiarity for example the average number of times each member has worked with every other member of the team, has a significant positive effect on performance or not? Misunderstanding or a little communication can create hard feelings or ambiguities which ultimately undermine the success of the team. Team environment needs to be where each member communicate openly and effectively

Abstract Global software development is rapidly becoming the norm for technology companies. Previous qualitative research suggests that multi-site development may increase development cycle time. We use both survey data and data from the source code change management system to model the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization, and explore several possible mechanisms for this delay. We also measure differences in same-site and cross-site communication patterns, and analyze the ...

Offshore and outsourced distributed software development models and processes are facing challenges, previously unknown, with respect to computing capacity, bandwidth, storage, security, complexity, reliability, and business uncertainty. Clouds promise to address these challenges by adopting recent advances in virtualization, parallel and distributed systems, utility computing, and software services. In this paper, we envision a cloud-based platform that addresses some of these core problems. We outline a generic cloud architecture, its design and our first implementation results for three cloud forms - a compute cloud, a storage cloud and a cloud-based software service- in the context of global distributed software development (GSD). Our ”compute cloud” provides computational services such as continuous code integration and a compile server farm, ”storage cloud” offers storage (block or file-based) services with an on-line virtual storage service, whereas the on-line virtual labs represent a useful cloud service. We note some of the use cases for clouds in GSD, the lessons learned with our prototypes and identify challenges that must be conquered before realizing the full business benefits. We believe that in the future, software practitioners will focus more on these cloud computing platforms and see clouds as a means to supporting a ecosystem of clients, developers and other key stakeholders.

Global Software Development (GSD) environment is based on a contractual relationship between client and vendor organizations in which a client outsources all or some part of its software development activities to a vendor. The vendor in return provides the agreed services in lieu of certain amount of remuneration. The main reasons to select the GSD technique include reduced cost, faster development and access to skilled manpower available across the world. Though GSD is emerging as an effective technique, but it suffers from many challenges like poor communication, lack of trust and coordination. These challenges pose serious risk to the smooth execution of the GSD projects. In the past decade, GSD has become an area of active research and a number of the researchers have worked on different aspects of it. In this paper, we present a critical review of the research studies conducted on GSD to highlight the challenges, best practices and benefits of GSD. Our findings reveal that much of the research in this area has been focused on addressing issues faced by client organizations, however, vendor side in the GSD relationship is much ignored due to which this field of study is still immature; hence, further research work is required to be undertaken to address the issues faced by the vendor organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to present a reference model for global software development, based on the results found in a case study conducted in two software development units from multinational organizations located in Brazil. A preliminary description of this model was originally published in 2004. In this paper, we present the reference model in detail, improving the description and discussing the factors that enable multinationals corporations to operate successfully across geographic and cultural boundaries. At the end, we also discuss a preliminary evaluation of the reference model usage

In current world multiple organizations are using the methodology of Global Software Development (GSD) because it is a convenient technique for developing the software projects. Global software advancement serves as a vowed relation among the client and vendor companies. In such relation the client contracts out a part or complete
development of the software to the vendor. As a response the vendor provides the services on which the agreement was made in lieu of the payment is made to the vendor as per agreed. GSD method is used because it offers the completion of project in less cost, quick development and the access to experienced resources. Even though GSD is coming out as a successful method but it has multiple difficulties which needs to be overcome such as bad communication, absence of faith and coordination among the team. Due to these challenges there is a significant risk factor in trouble free execution. Our results show that most of the focus in previous research in this area has been limited to highlighting the problems encountered by the client companies. The vendor side up to this time is not very mature because this aspect of GSD is not payed much attention.

Requirements Management is one of the challenging and key tasks in the development of software products in distributed software development environment. One of the key reasons found in our literature survey the failure of software projects due to poor project management and requirement management activity. This main aim of this paper 1. Formulate a framework for the successful and efficient requirements management framework for Global Software Development Projects. (GSD) 2. Design a Mixed organization structure of both traditional approaches and agile approaches, of global software development projects. 3. Apply Ontology based Knowledge Management Systems for both the approaches to achieve requirements issues such as missing, inconsistency of requirements, communication and knowledge management issues and improve the project management activities in a global software development environment. 4. Propose requirements management metrics to measure and manage software process during the development of information systems. The major contribution of this paper is to analyze the requirements management issues and challenges associated with global software development projects. Two hypotheses have been formulated and tested this problem through statistical techniques like correlation and regression analysis and validate the same.

Increasingly, software projects are becoming geographically distributed, with limited face-toface interaction between participants. These projects face particular challenges that need careful managerial attention. This PhD study reports on how we can understand and support the management of distributed software projects, based on a literature study and a case study. The main emphasis of the literature study was on how to support the management of distributed software projects, but also contributed to an understanding of these projects. The main emphasis of the case study was on how to understand the management of distributed software projects, but also contributed to supporting the management of these projects.
The literature study integrates what we know about risks and risk-resolution techniques, into a framework for managing risks in distributed contexts. This framework was developed iteratively, using evaluations by practitioners. Subsequently, the framework served as the foundation for the design of a risk management process, compliant with Capability Maturity Model Integration’s (CMMI) generic approach to risk management (2006).
The case study investigates the managerial challenges of control and coordination in a successful, distributed software project between a Russian and a Danish company. The case study’s control aspects were investigated, drawing on Kirsch’s (2004) elements of control framework, to analyze how control is enacted in the project. This analysis showed that informal measurement and evaluation controls were used even though the team was short-lived and rarely met face-to-face; in addition, informal roles and relationships, such as clanlike control, were also used. The investigation suggests that management in successful distributed software projects can be highly reliant on both formal and informal controls and in both a project context and mediated communications. The case study’s coordination aspects were investigated, drawing on the collective mind concept, developed by Weick and Roberts (1993), to analyze the patterns of mediated interactions in multimodal communication. This analysis showed that multimodal communication can facilitate collective minding in distributed software projects and can positively impact performance. In providing an approach for investigating the impact of multimodal communication practices on virtual team performance, we can further understand and support coordination in distributed software projects.

Context: The basic ground for any software system is its architecture. Those systems degenerate earlier which do not incorporate an adjustable architecture. We found an increasing interest within software research community about architectural knowledge management. The need to manage architectural knowledge becomes more crucial when it comes to globally dispersed teams and organizations. Architectural knowledge management effectiveness can help in reducing challenges imposed by GSD. Objective: This study is a systematic literature review of Architectural Knowledge Management practices and tools for GSD. The objective of this review is to explore the AKM practices and tools being used and propose the most effective practices or tool that can overcome most of the AKM challenges faced by GSD teams. Method: We identified the primary studies involved in this work through a selection processes and a clearly stated inclusion exclusion criteria. Results: As the research topic indicates the study is divided into two major themes: first theme is Architectural Knowledge Management (AKM) practices and the second theme is Architectural Knowledge Management (AKM) tools. Conclusion: As a result of this study we concluded some suggestions for further research in this topic.

Software engineering involves people collaborating to develop better software. Collaboration is challenging, especially across time zones and without face-to-face meetings. We therefore use collaboration tools all along the product life cycle to let us work together, stay together, and achieve results together. This article summarizes experiences and trends chosen from recent IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (IGSCE) conferences.

The aim of this article is to explore intercultural communication challenges faced by Global Software development teams and how this effects performance of multicultural teams. Along with verbal and nonverbal communication challenges paper also analyze prejudices and stereotypes that influences intercultural communication. And to conclude skills to be acquired for successful global teams are identified and listed.

This research study was conducted to identify team-level coordination issues and to make strategies that help in overcoming these hurdles between Global Software Engineering (GSE) teams. In GSE projects, a steady flow of communication and coordination between the team members is required throughout the project. Communication and coordination make top in the list of challenges currently faced by GSE projects. Geographically dispersed teams members often face lack of coordination problems because of minimal communication. In GSE, teams coordinate on different level from requirement engineering (RE) phase to project deployment phase. Our main focus in this research was achieving coordination between dispersed GSE teams of requirements engineers, software designers and software developer.

Although agile methods in their purest way fit several companies, it has been a challenge to perform them in environments with distributed teams developing large software applications. Contractual items, for projects under development for external organizations, introduce additional complexities for pure agilebased approaches. The majority of global teams and companies use hybrid development practices that combine different development methods and frameworks. This research provides results from an empirical field study on how the hybrids practices are adopted in Global Software Development (GSD) projects. A systematic literature review was conducted to capture the status of combining agile with plan-driven in GSD projects. The results were limited to peer-reviewed conference papers or journal articles, published between 2001 and 2020. The present study selected 37 papers from five different bibliographic databases. In the end, 16 practices were summarized and described as hybrid by GSD projects. Based on the findings of this study, the authors can conclude that the contribution of this study is not only limited to identifying how hybrid development practices are applied in GSD but also allowing that practitioners can have a basis for adapting their development methods.

There is growing interest in applying agile practices in Global Software Development (GSD) projects. But project stakeholder distribution in GSD creates a number of challenges that make it difficult to use some agile practices. Moreover, little is known about what the key challenges or risks are, and how GSD project mangers deal with these risks while using agile practices. We conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following existing guidelines to identify primary papers that discuss the use of Scrum practices in ...

A requirement is a capability to which a product or service should conform to. A meticulous consideration to requirements engineering acts as a backbone of software projects. Ambiguous and unrealistic  requirements are major source of failure  in the software-intensive systems. Requirements engineering processes are complex as most of the requirements  engineering documentation is written in natural languages which are less formal and often distract the designers and developers. Requirements management is a continuous process throughout the project life cycle and relates to documenting, analyzing,  tracing and prioritizing requirements and then  finally controlling changes. The main issues related to requirements  management are usually social, political and cultural. Software requirement engineers who gather the requirements  generally consider  that such issues are beyond the scope of their profession as they deem them within  the project management ambit. In this study, we highlight the management issues that arise in the requirements engineering process and explore the possibilities to tackle them amicably. The study is supplemented with a critical review of the existing methodologies for resolving and managing  software requirements.

Organizations are moving their workforce to guarantee matters of trade and profit where accounts are expected to be less expensive and provide better quality products with the accessibility of skilled labor. With the evident benefits, distributed teams often face challenges with reliable and efficient communication-coordination patterns that lead towards project failure. In the rapidly growing software industry, it becomes critical for any business to have better management activities to acquire right processes and practices. Agile methods are considered as a remedy for mitigating distributed teams' challenges, with their consistent focus on communication. Here, we intend to propose a tailored Scrum based solution for distributed teams that empowers anticipated communication and coordination throughout the development process. In the first phase of framework development we have evaluated the state of agile practices from both literature and industry; based on collected evidence and suggestive guidelines a scrum based agile framework was formulated. The Scrum is a project management method in Agile Methods family. Scrum is an iterative process that asks for incremental development of the product, includes cross functional development and testing teams. Evaluation results show that the proposed framework contributes positively to improve development process quality. We have performed theoretical as well as empirical evaluation to validate proposed framework. We have eight project managing rising aspects in DSD (Distributed Software Development) to evaluate the proposed framework.

The field of Software Engineering has suffered considerable transformation in the last decades due to the influence of the philosophy of Lean Thinking. The purpose of this systematic review is to identify practices and approaches proposed by researchers in this area in the last 5 years, who have worked under the influence of this thinking. The search strategy brought together 549 studies, 80 of which were classified as relevant for synthesis in this review. Seventeen tools of Lean Thinking adapted to Software Engineering were catalogued, as well as 35 practices created for the development of software that has been influenced by this philosophy. The study provides a roadmap of results with the current state of the art and the identification of gaps pointing to opportunities for further research.

Context: Global Software Development (GSD) presents significant challenges to share and understand knowledge required for developing software. Organizations are expected to implement appropriate practices to address knowledge-sharing challenges in GSD. With the growing literature on GSD and its widespread adoption, it is important to build a body of knowledge to support future research and effective knowledge sharing practices. Objective: We aimed at systematically identifying and synthesizing knowledge sharing challenges and practices. We also intended to classify the recurrent challenges and most frequently reported practices in different contextual settings. Method: We used Systematic Literature Review (SLR) for reviewing 61 primary studies that were selected after searching the GSD literature published over the last 14 years (2000 – September 2014). We applied thematic analysis method for analysing the data extracted from the reviewed primary studies. Results: Our findings revealed that knowledge sharing challenges and practices in GSD could be classified in 6 main themes: management, team structure, work processes/ practices, team cognition, social attributes and technology. In regard to contextual settings, we found empirical studies were mainly conducted in an offshore outsourcing collaboration model distributed between two sites. Most of the studied organizations were large enterprises. Many of the studies did not report any information for several contextual attributes that made it difficult to analyse the reported challenges and practices with respect to their respective contexts. Conclusion: We can conclude: a) there is a higher tendency among researchers to report practices than challenges of knowledge sharing in GSD. b) Given our analysis, most of the reported knowledge sharing challenges and practices fall under the theme of " work practices ". c) The technology related knowledge-sharing challenges are the least reported; we discussed the available technologies for supporting knowledge sharing needs in GSD. d) The organizational contextual information is missing from a large number of studies; hence, it was not possible to investigate the potential relations between knowledge sharing challenges/practices and the contextual attributes of GSD teams. We assert the need of exploring knowledge sharing in the context of small/ medium sized organizations to avoid the risk of findings being biased by specific empirical setting (e.g., large enterprises distributed between US and India).

Abstract. Due to the proliferation of the Internet and globalization, distributed information system development is becoming popular. In this paper we have reviewed some significant management issues like process management, project management, requirements management and ...

For many businesses, managing globally distributed IT projects effectively is key to success in today’s competitive environment. However, IT projects and their managements are notorious for failures, and managing globally distributed teams poses unique additional challenges. While the Internet, email and the Web have been major means of communication among such teams, new Web 2.0 technologies and applications which have emerged into prominence in the last few years present new opportunities for successfully managing global projects. This paper presents the authors’ findings on awareness and level of use of Web 2.0 tools for project management among global teams. It also offers recommendations on how managers of global IT projects can manage their teams more efficiently and effectively using Web 2.0 tools.

Context Global software development (GSD) promises high‐quality software at low cost. GSD enables around‐the‐clock development to achieve maximum production in a short period of time by using expertise around the globe. This development is only possible if tasks are effectively distributed among sites to ensure smooth development. Therefore, one of the key challenges of GSD is to design a task allocation strategy. Objective The objective of this study is to identify various factors that influence task allocation decisions in GSD and to assess their relative importance. We also aim to determine the interrelationship between the factors along with role played by product architecture and communication and coordination needs during task allocation. Methods We used multiple methods to collect data about the task allocation factors and process. A web‐based survey of 54 GSD practitioners from around the globe was conducted to identify the factors and their relative importance for task allocation decision. The selection of the sample was performed via the snowball sampling technique. To increase the sample size, the survey was also posted on social media, that is, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Nonparametric statistical tests were applied on the response data to identify correlations and significance. Interviews were conducted from 11 project managers having 10 to 30 years GSD experience to gain insight into the dynamics of task allocation process. Results The survey results highlight " expertise, " " site characteristics, " and " task site dependency " as the most important factors for a task allocation decision. The interview study has highlighted the importance of situation‐specific decision making during task allocation. The significance of factors varies with the characteristics of task, characteristics of organization, type of GSD, and objective of doing GSD. The culture and time differences between distributed sites have been assigned a low priority by the majority of the practitioners. The most common way of distributing task is functional area of expertise and phase‐based division, where detailed architecture is not considered. Interdependent modules are not allocated to distributed sites because of communication and coordination overhead. Our results also demonstrate a correlation between various factors and support Conway's law. Conclusions We have interesting results in which certain factors are ranked differently from the prevalent views in the GSD literature. The survey results have also confirmed the application of Conway's law in practice for task allocation, where interdependent modules are not allocated to distributed sites. The significance of factors varies with characteristics of task, characteristics of organization, type of GSD, and objective of GSD, which require trade‐off between factors. The need of a well‐defined situation‐specific task allocation framework is evident from the results of survey and interview study. The outline of a task allocation framework for GSD is presented.

The transformative global economy posed challenges to businesses in service management. In this computing age, the perceptual and operational edge of a certain business or organization manifested on the kind of technology it offers in the Service Management. Organizations have long recognized the importance of managing key resources such as people and information. Information has now moved to its rightful place as a key resource in the organization and therefore management of the same can be instituted by employing methodology. To keep their brand promise, technology has been used;The number of new entrants to every sectors of economy has grown significantly in recent years, and each firm strives to make their daily operation efficient in which demand for business software or application software getting higher and businesses or organizations opted to build or buy this software. Because of new entrants, it had offered opportunity to software developers to translate business processes into systems. This study investigates waste in the software development by application of Lean principles. Like any conventional projects, software becomes buggy and oftentimes it fails. Software failure is always attributed to the software engineering, not the incompetence of project managers, inadequacy of the people on the project, or lack of clear goal. The researchers' contentions are there wastes in the software development and serve as mechanism and evidence to why software fails. Software failure is not attributed to the software itself, it includes however the acceptance of the clients and end-users. Descriptive secondary data analysis, participant observation and Fishbone Analysis were the methodology used in the study. Wastes include unfinished or partially done work, extra features, relearning, handoffs, delays, task switching, and defects.

Nowadays software development activity tends to be decentralized, thus expanding greater development efforts towards more attractive zones for organizations. The type of development in which the team members are distributed in remote sites is called Distributed Software Development (DSD). A variant of the DSD is Global Software Development (GSD), where the team is distributed beyond the borders of a nation.