Risk Management in Global Software Development Projects: Challenges, Solutions, and Experience

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

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 (GSD) is considered as the coordinated activities of software development that are geographically and temporally distributed. The management of architectural knowledge, specifically, architectural design decisions (ADDs), becomes important in GSD due to the geographical, temporal, and cultural challenges in global environments. Based on our previous work on ADD management in localized software development, we present five ADD paradigms for GSD projects with different organizational structures. We also investigate the benefits and the challenges of these ADD paradigms by conducting an evaluation of the paradigms using extensive archived semi-structured interview data from industrial GSD projects. We aim to provide a fundamental framework for managing ADD documentation and evolution in GSD, as well as offer useful insights into managing architectural knowledge in a global setting.

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.

The requirements elicitation is considered as one of the most critical tasks performed during the whole requirements engineering process. The requirements elicitation frameworks define a systematic structured way to perform requirements elicitation task during software development projects. The requirements elicitation in global software development projects becomes a more challenging task due to the high diversity in its participants. The pre-elicitation processes can be customized to better plane the requirements elicitation process for global software development contexts. This article presents a structured hierarchy of pre-elicitation processes for global software development-based requirements elicitation frameworks. The presented pre-elicitation processes hierarchy can be customized to apply for traditional requirements elicitation frameworks used for inhouse software development contexts.

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.

Effective communication is an important issue for global software development. Due to geographical limitations and travel challenges, face-to-face meetings are expensive to schedule and run. Web-based communication methods are thus the primary means of communication in global software development efforts. In general, two types of web-based communication mechanisms exist: synchronous and asynchronous communications; each serves a unique role. In this paper, we present an empirical study of the communication mechanisms in GNOME GTK+, a small-sized open-source distributed software project, in which Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Mailing Lists are used as synchronous and asynchronous communication methods, respectively. The objective of this study is to identify how real time and asynchronous communication methods could be used and balanced across global software development projects.

Software development projects seem to raise many challenges and issues. These issues are exacerbated when the projects are distributed globally and thus software development projects are multicultural. Globalization has increased the need to estimate the effectiveness and cost savings of every project. That is why many projects are outsourced or in other ways distributed to cheaper countries. The main problems of software development projects are related to knowledge sharing, communication, and cultural issues. This paper studies the challenges in global multicultural software development projects and the kinds of collaborative tools available for software development. This paper presents an examination of a collaboration model for global multicultural software development. The model is based on the authors' own work experience and literature research. We propose that this model could be used as a reference model when planning global software projects.

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.

Most firms engage in outsourcing of software development to lower costs. Several years ago we began working with firms that were using global partners to increase innovation in product development. These firms were able to deliver product capabilities beyond those that could be generated inside their own organization. They were not just outsourcing to reduce costs; instead they were leveraging their global partners to increase the value of their products for their customers. This paper provides an overview of the results from our six-month study. The goal was to understand the successful practices used to achieve innovation in new product development projects between leading technology firms and their global software development partners.

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.

Software industry is continuously exploring better ways to develop applications. A new phenomenon to achieve this is cloud‐based global software development (CGSD), which refers to the adoption of cloud computing services by organizations to support global software development projects. The CGSD approach affects the strategic and operational aspects of the way projects are managed. The objective of the study is to identify the success factors which contribute to management of CGSD projects. We carried out a multivocal literature review (MLR) to identify the success factors from the state‐of‐the‐art and the state‐of‐the‐practice in project management of CGSD projects. We identified 32 success factors that contribute to the management of CGSD projects. The findings of MLR indicate that time to market, continuous development, financial restructuring, and scalability are the most critical success factors for CGSD. Moreover, the findings of the study show that there is a positive correlation between the success factors reported in both formal literature and industry based gray literature. The findings of this study can assist the practitioners to develop the strategies needed for effective project management of CGSD projects.

Global Software Development (GSD) has gained significant popularity as an emerging paradigm. Companies also show interest in applying agile approaches in distributed development to combine the advantages of both approaches. However, in their most radical forms, agile and GSD can be placed in each end of a plan-based/agile spectrum because of how work is coordinated. We describe how three GSD projects applying agile methods coordinate their work. We found that trust is needed to reduce the need of standardization and direct supervision when coordinating work in a GSD project, and that electronic chatting supports mutual adjustment. Further, co-location and modularization mitigates communication problems, enables agility in at least part of a GSD project, and renders the implementation of Scrum of Scrums possible.

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.

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.