A framework for groupware‐supported software architecture evaluation process in global software development

We have developed a framework for groupware tool support for the software architecture evaluation process in the context of global software development. We have empirically assessed the effectiveness of the groupware-supported software architecture evaluation process in a set of controlled experiments. While we found that groupware-supported distributed meetings can be very effective, we saw the need to investigate users' acceptance of the tool used in these empirical studies. In this paper we report on the "perceived usefulness" and "ease of use" of the groupware tool based on the adapted Davis' technology acceptance model (TAM), a widely used general-purpose instrument for measuring users' attitude towards a particular technology. Main results from analyzing the TAM data are: a majority of the participants found the tool quite useful and easy to use for supporting collaborative tasks like architecture evaluation; a majority of the respondents was also very positive about the regular use of the tool for collaborative tasks in the future. However, there was considerably less support for preferring a distributed tool-based meeting to a face-to-face meeting.

Requirements change management (RCM) is an important and complicated phase in the agile for the software development process. The objective of this study was to identify and analyse the factors that can positively affect the agile RCM (ARCM) process in the context of global software development (GSD). To this end, a questionnaire survey was carried out with researcher and practitioner participants working in the field of GSD. From the 56 survey respondents, a total of 20 factors that can positively influence the ARCM activities in GSD were identified. The authors also performed a client–vendor‐based analysis to investigate the significance of the considered factors for different organisation types. Additionally, they compared the data collected from researchers and practitioners. The comparison results ( r s (20) = 0.076) revealed that there exists a positive correlation between the rankings in each data set. The investigated factors were mapped to ten project management book of knowledge areas, and the mapping results revealed that human resource management is the most significant knowledge area amongst the investigated factors. The findings of this study provide a robust framework to assist GSD firms in implementing ARCM activities.

Sociomaterial bricolage: The creation of location-spanning work practices by global software developers

Planning and managing of requirement change management (RCM) process in global software development (GSD) are a complicated task, but the RCM plays a significant role in developing the quality software within time and budget. The key aim of this study is to prioritize the factors that could positively influence the RCM program in GSD context. To achieve the study objective, the questionnaire survey study was conducted to get the feedback of the practitioners concerning the success factors of RCM in GSD context. Moreover, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied. The application of FAHP is novel in this research domain as it has been effectively applied previously in various other research areas, for example, supplier selection, electronics and electrical, personnel selection, and agile software development. The results of this study will provide the prioritization‐based taxonomy of RCM success factors and also contribute by introducing the novel FAHP approach in the research domain of RCM in GSD. The FAHP approach assists the practitioners to reduce the uncertainty and vague opinions of RCM experts.

Software development is a complex task, and the introduction of multi‐site development teams spread across the globe makes it even harder. Requirement changes during the software development process are inevitable, and failing to manage evolving requirements is one of the contributors to project failures. Requirements change management (RCM) becomes difficult in global software development (GSD) projects due to the need to communicate and coordinate between stakeholders in a distributed environment. This research work aims to identify the factors that have positive impacts on RCM activities in GSD. We conducted a multi‐vocal literature review (MLR) and a questionnaire survey study to identify the RCM success factors. The results of the t‐test (ie, t = 0.0347 and P = .700 > .05) and correlation (rs (25) = 0.573, P = .003) indicates that there is no significant difference between the findings of MLR and the questionnaire survey. The identified factors were further analyzed in the context of client and vendor organizations to better understand the RCM success factors in both types of GSD firms. The findings of this study can provide a useful framework for tackling problems associated with RCM in a GSD environment that is significant to the progression of GSD firms.

The benefits of using globally distributed sites for the development, maintenance, and operation of software-based systems and services are obvious. But global development also bears large risks. What seems at first to be economically reasonable often proves to be too expensive. Missing adjustment of communication and processes between different sites and insufficient knowledge of suitable management practices and organizational skills often lead to insufficient product quality. Global development and maintenance processes are difficult to control and often additional costs arise, especially for quality assurance and follow-up activities. Mastering global software projects requires, on the one hand, suitable tailoring of software development tasks and their distribution to different sites based on multiple criteria (not only cost!). On the other hand, appropriate process and management practices need to be established. Quantitative models can then be used to assess cost, schedule goals, and quality risks. I will introduce fundamental techniques for the establishment of well-understood and manageable distributed development processes and discuss different ways for managing risks. Based on a technique for splitting up development tasks and a multidisciplinary decision model for "smart" task distribution to different sites, I will demonstrate how distributed development processes can be organized in a productive way. This will be done by using examples from industry projects. Additionally, I will present upcoming topics such as cloud-supported global software development or the software factory, a research and development infrastructure at the University of Helsinki that supports systematic testing of novel distributed development techniques. Finally I will show how, in order to avoid global development risks, the application of fundamental software engineering principles must be emphasized.

Coordination of interdependent tasks across geographical, temporal and socio-cultural boundaries has been identified as a critical antecedent to global software development (GSD) team performance. Since GSD teams are increasingly required to achieve software development agility and respond to changing business requirements, conventional plan-driven software development methods become inadequate to manage the cross-boundary dependencies. To cope with this issue, there is an emerging trend of implementing change-driven agile methods in GSD; we call this practice agile GSD. This paper focuses on the formulation of coordination strategies in agile GSD. We argue that Coordination Theory (CT) can serve as a useful lens to develop a deeper understanding of the formulation process. We present a case study in a leading software development company using agile GSD and present preliminary results by applying the lens of CT.

In global software development (GSD), teams from different geographies are involved in software development activities from requirement till management phase. There are many potential benefits associated with GSD environment such as development cost, round the clock development, accessibility to better skilled people and many others. Although, organizations are achieving the benefits of GSD but its challenging nature such as cultural and language differences, trust relationship, coordination and communication is introducing numerous challenges that cannot be ignored. These challenges are significantly influencing requirement engineering (RE) process in GSD. One of the reasons behind challenging nature of RE in GSD is varying situational contexts such as social, communication and cultural contexts, language, human, technical and management related contexts. This necessitate for a comprehensive framework that demonstrates the perspective of situational contexts. This study aims to review the existing situational RE frameworks, highlights the reported situational contexts and provide future research directions. The literature revealed that the situational contexts are commonly related to twelve categories that include stakeholders, organization, requirements, project, management, risk, culture, standard, task, communication, technique and methods, and innovation. The situational contexts related to these categories show the main standpoint of situational software development in GSD. These situational contexts are significant for improving competencies of the team members while performing RE process in GSD environment. This study also draws attention towards some imperative research directions for further studies in line of situational software engineering.

Global software development efforts have increased in recent years, and such development seems to have become a business necessity for various reasons, including cost, availability of resources, and the need to locate development closer to customers. However, there's still much to learn about global software development before the discipline becomes mature. This special issue aims to assess the gap between the state of the art and the state of the practice. It presents five articles that cover various aspects of global software development, including knowledge management strategies, distributed software development, requirements engineering, distributed requirements, and managing offshore collaboration. A Point/Counterpoint department discusses whether global software development is indeed a business necessity.This article is part of a special issue on Global Software Development.

Over the last two decades of globalisation, the software industry has witnessed the emergence of Global Software Development (GSD). Various business motives have driven software companies to outsource software development projects to software companies based in low cost economies. Given the highly competitive environment in which software companies operate, the client and the vendor have to equip themselves to operate successfully across national and international boundaries. Software development carried out at various geographical locations across boundaries is mainly impeded by distance which can be categorized as exterior and interior. The exterior distance is formed due to geographical, cultural and temporal differences while the interior distance is created due to organisational, technological and knowledge differences. The outcome of these distances is that they draw out primarily communication, coordination, culture and control issues which can spiral out of control if not resolved. The literature on GSD gives evidence as to how various tactics are applied to alleviate these issues created by global distance. While each of these is of interest to the GSD researchers, this research study has particular focus on coordination. Coordination is the act of making things work together for attaining common goals. In GSD projects, the mechanisms essential to coordinate the work and manage interdependencies may get disrupted. Hence appropriate coordination strategies are essential to achieve project goals when several actors are involved and multiple activities are performed. The explicit aim of the research presented in this thesis was to develop a GSDCOORD Model. The GSD-COORD Model comprises of specific processes with a defined set of strategies for coordination of tasks that can be followed by Project Managers when managing GSD projects. These strategies have emerged from literature, multiple case studies conducted in the vendor companies operating in India and mapped with the relevant sections of the PMBOK® Guide. This GSDCOORD Model is then validated by GSD researchers and experts from software companies in various countries. The validation process helped to evaluate the significance of each strategy in the model and its applicability. The GSD-COORD Model is an adaptable approach to project management where the processes and strategies can be tailored to suit different global and organizational settings.

Global software development has become the norm rather than the exception for even the smallest companies. However, global software development is known to lead to numerous negative effects among distributed teams. This paper focuses on the effect of global software development on motivation. Specifically we ask: “Does increased autonomy, through the introduction of scrum, result in higher motivation among distributed developers?” We studied two distributed software development teams within one company headquartered in Ireland. Teams employ the scrum approach to software development which emphasizes, among other things, autonomy. We observed the teams during their scrum ceremonies, interviewed each team member and administered a motivation survey. We found that the difference in motivation levels before and after the introduction of scrum was slight and not statistically significant. Instead, there was a significant difference in the motivation levels of experienced team members, which were lower than less experienced members.

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.

Professional software development is normally team based and is recognised as a socio-technical activity. In recent years, this has been coupled with the increasing popularity of outsourcing and offshoring software development. These are two significant issues, which need to be considered and recognized. As educators, it is important that we prepare our students, at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level to make informed and meaningful contributions to the industry they plan to enter. To facilitate this we need to consider providing modules that outline the benefits and problems associated with globally distributed software development. As research has identified, a key element of any such module is the importance and impact that cultural diversity plays. To facilitate understanding in this area, students can benefit from knowledge of the literature on culture. This can provide essential information which allows them to understand the broader aspects of this important topic. In this paper, global software development and culture are placed in context. A summary of relevant literature with respect to culture is presented and discussed. Details of modules on the topic of global software development for both undergraduates and postgraduates, which utilised this literature, are outlined. The results from an inductive study carried out with some of the students who undertook these modules are also presented and discussed.

The software development industry or organizations increasingly emerging day by day have adopted global software development (GSD) practices due to the large significance of outsourcing. These industries face many challenges due to a lack of understanding customer perspective in the GSD environment. For any organization, the customer is the major stakeholder, and customer relationship management (CRM) plays a vital role in customer satisfaction with software development projects. These challenges create serious risks for any software development project’s success. Thus, CRM is a crucial challenge in the success of software projects in the GSD environment. This research study aims to address the factors that negatively influence CRM implementation in the global context and proposes a conceptual model based on the identified factors for enhancing software product quality. The systematic literature review (SLR) phase investigates the potential barriers to CRM implementation in GSD. Based on identified barriers, an initial conceptual model is developed. The proposed conceptual model is validated using a questionnaire survey of the GSD industry and CRM practitioners of Pakistan. Statistical analysis and several suitable tests are also performed to develop the final conceptual model for CRM implementation in the GSD environment. This research is performed from the client’s perspective. The results are promising and accommodating to avoid any software project failure due to customer-related issues in a GSD environment.

Cloud computing is being increasingly adopted in various domains for providing on-demand infrastructure and Software as a service (SaaS) by leveraging the utility computing model and virtualization technologies. One of the domains, where cloud computing is expected to gain huge traction is Global Software Development (GSD) that has emerged as a popular software development model. Despite several promised benefits, GSD is characterized by not only technical issues but also the complexities associated with its processes. One of the key challenges of GSD is to provide appropriate tools more efficiently and cost-effectively. Moreover, variations in tools available/used by different GSD team members can also pose challenges. We assert that providing Tools as a Service (TaaS) to GSD teams through a cloud-based infrastructure can be a promising solution to address the tools related challenges in GSD projects. Through an extensive review of the relevant literature on GSD and Cloud Computing, we have identified a set of quality attributes and potential architectural solutions for a cloud-based infrastructure that can provide TaaS to GSD teams. This paper outlines the promised benefits of TaaS to GSD teams, describes the expected quality attributes of a cloud-based infrastructure and how these quality attributes can be achieved. We also present a reference architecture for a cloud-based infrastructure to provide TaaS in GSD projects and describe its use with a detailed scenario of GSD projects.