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Understanding a lack of trust in Global Software Teams: a multiple‐case study
Abstract
Many organizations have turned towards globally distributed software development (GSD) in their quest for cheap, higher-quality software that has a short development cycle. However, this kind of development has often been reported as being problematic and complex to manage. There are indications that trust is a fundamental factor in determining the success or failure of GSD projects. This article studies the key factors that cause a lack of trust and the effect of lacking trust and present data from four projects in which problems with trust were experienced. We found the key factors to be poor socialization and socio-cultural fit, increased monitoring, inconsistency and disparities in work practices, reduction of and unpredictability in communication; and a lack of face-to-face meetings, language skills, conflict handling, and cognitive-based trust. The effect of lacking trust was a decrease in productivity, quality, information exchange and feedback, morale among the employees, and an increase in relationship conflicts. In addition, the employees tended to self-protect, to prioritize individual goals over group goals, and to doubt negative feedback from the manager. Further, the managers increased monitoring, which reduced the level of trust even more. These findings have implications for software development managers and practitioners involved in GSD. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Trust is a fundamental aspect of cooperative work in software development [10]. This fundamental aspect is the current case in collocated software teams, but it is even more important in a virtual team environment [11]. Trust is believed to be the fundamental factor in determining the success or failure of virtual teams [12,13,14,15]. ...
... In that case, leaders in the process could promote faceto-face meetings [23,24], new leadership styles [25,26], new software tools [11,27,28], ad-hoc training [28,29], and other initiatives to enhance trust level. ...
... Because team members can feel uncomfortable evaluating their teammates, the obtained opinion can be biased. Some researchers have reported the fear of job loss for some developers in virtual software development scenarios [11,28,55], which contributes to creating an inappropriate environment for gathering objective opinions about interpersonal relationships. ...
The progress of Information and Communication Technologies has significantly promoted the relationships among people of different geographical regions. Under this novel context, new settings of software development teams arise, known as virtual teams. The objective is to identify, evaluate and synthesize reported research about the measurement of interpersonal trust (IpT) in virtual software teams (VST). We conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature published in the research area until July 2019. We reviewed 747 papers, of which 11 primary studies were considered relevant for the investigation. Most studies (8 of 11) use instruments of direct measurements (interviews and questionnaires) to measure interpersonal trust. Studies that use indirect measurements focus on different characteristics of the virtual software team (agreeableness, affective lexicon, delegation, positive tone, acceptance of knowledge, etc and others). Recomiendo: Most studies (10 of 11) report that interpersonal trust measurements improve performance aspects of virtual software teams. Among them the willingness to share information, goodwill towards others, motivation, collaboration, and effectiveness. Most studies use questionnaires or interviews, but we believe that software repository mining to obtain IpT levels will be an auspicious research trend in the future. The attribute more used to assess IpT is the developer opinion. Other attributes used are emotions, interactions between developers, biography, acceptance of knowledge, and assignment of tasks. IpT measurement is a useful tool for decision-making in VTS management, especially in agile software processes, but there is little evidence of its use.
... Further, data collection is challenging in GSD studies. In their study of four distributed projects across four countries, Moe et al. [15] experienced that because of limited availability of remote team members due to limited resources in the projects, it was not possible to interview project members from all sites. ...
... Moe and Smite [15] found the key factors to cause a lack of trust in GSD projects to be poor socialization and socio-cultural fit, increased monitoring, inconsistency and disparities in work practices, reduction of and unpredictability in communication; and a lack of face-to-face meetings, language skills, conflict handling, and cognitive-based trust. The effect of lacking trust was a decrease in productivity, quality, information exchange and feedback, morale among the employees, and an increase in relationship conflicts. ...
... Britto et al. [3] argue that a long term relationship with the distributed company is one reason for getting access to remote team members and managers. While the study by Moe and Smite [15] reported on the importance of the same type of relationship with a GSD company, the researchers could not get access to some of the remote team members because the projects had ended when the data was collected and the managers did not let the developers participate in the interviews. One reason could be that the GSD setup was motivated by saving cost, and allocating time for interviews would increase the cost. ...
Many companies have turned towards globally distributed software development in their quest for access to more development capacity. This paper investigates how a company onboarded distributed teams in a global project, and report experience on how to study such distributed projects. Onboarding is the process of helping new team members adapt to the existing team and ways of working. The goal of the studied onboarding program was to integrate Por-tuguese developers into two existing Norwegian teams. Further, due to the growing trend in utilizing globally distributed projects, and the challenge of conducting studies in distributed organizations, it is crucial to find good practices for researching such projects. We collected qualitative data from interviews, observations, Slack conversations and documents, and quantitative data on Slack activity. We report experiences on different onboarding practices and techniques, and we suggest guidelines to help other researchers conduct qualitative studies in globally distributed projects. CCS CONCEPTS • General and reference → Empirical studies; • Software and its engineering → Software creation and management.
... Trust is a crucial social aspect of cooperative work in software engineering [10]. The trust in VST is more important than in collocated software teams [11]. Several researches shown that trust is a key factor in determining the success or failure of virtual work groups [12][13][14][15]. ...
... If a low level of trust is measured, the software project manager could encourage face-to-face meetings [23,24], new leadership styles [25,26], new communication tools [11,27,28], ad-hoc training [28,29], and other initiatives to improve group trust. ...
Nowadays, people from different geographical areas can be closely related thanks to advances in information and communication technologies. This has a greater impact in software development organizations where their members form virtual work teams. In these new co-located work scenarios, the construction of interpersonal trust is more complex and its impact is very relevant in the performance of software development teams. This paper presents the results of the performanceevaluation of four pre-trained language models based on BERT applied to trust analysis tasks. For this work, a small dataset of 1453 comments obtained from software projects stored on Github was created. The evaluated language models achieved moderately good values, in the order of 0.84 for the F1-score metric, which augurs that with further research they could be significantly improved.
... While having the confidence to speak up within a team is an important characteristic of a psychologically safe team, competitive selfselection may have a negative impact on team conflict and psychological safety [2,35]. An increase in an individuals' selfturns can also come across as monitoring to their other team members, which stems from a lack of trust that their team members will properly complete their tasks [36]. This overcommunication can also negatively affect the trust of the other team members as they may become self-protective or defensive from the monitoring of their team members [36,37]. ...
... An increase in an individuals' selfturns can also come across as monitoring to their other team members, which stems from a lack of trust that their team members will properly complete their tasks [36]. This overcommunication can also negatively affect the trust of the other team members as they may become self-protective or defensive from the monitoring of their team members [36,37]. Trust, a core factor of psychological safety, could be another possible link between self-turns and psychological safety, as team members must trust one another to feel safe in their teams [2]. ...
Psychological safety and turn-taking have both been listed as key factors needed for collaboration in teams to emerge. Specifically, prior work has shown that increased communication in teams can lead to high psychological safety. Prior work on turn-taking as a measure of communication has mostly focused on its inclusivity in a team rather than its frequency. While the gender composition of the team can impact both participation as well as team psychological safety, there is a lack of research at the individual level. As such, this study provides the first attempt at connecting turn-taking, gender, and psychological safety through the analysis of members of fifteen engineering design student teams during the concept generation stage of their project. Specifically, we gathered video data to study how the number of turns and self-turns in a team impact psychological safety at both the individual and the team levels. We also examined how gender impacts participation and individual perceptions of psychological safety. The results found that turns and self-turns have a significant positive impact on an individual’s perception of the team’s psychological safety. However, no such relationship was found at the team level, indicating that there may be additional underlying factors in team level psychological safety. While we found that gender did not impact individual turn-taking, it did affect an individual’s perception of their psychological safety. These results provide quantitative evidence of the role of team communication on psychological safety.
... v. Unrestricted working hours (employees decide their own operating time for overlapping and there are no standard work hours) [95]; REPR 11 = Providing electronic message "drop in", remote phoning, and artefact distribution capabilities to distant practitioners' rooms [96]; REPR 12 = Enabling professional integration from the outset of the project, such as by holding face-to-face kick-off meetings to create personal interactions [21,97]; REPR 13 = Organizing regular visits to isolated locations in order to foster trust [18,98,99]; REPR 14 = Encouraging direct contact amongst stakeholders [100]; REPR 15 = Assuring that stakeholders are introduced to each other from the start of the project [101]; ...
... REPR 16 = Facilitating interaction in the client's original tongue [5]; REPR 17 = Advising on the usage of groupware tools [99]; REPR 18 = Attempting to convince stakeholders that disclosing concerns or sharing information would have beneficial repercussions rather than adverse effects [94]; REPR 19 = Organizing video or teleconferences on day-to-day, weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly basis such that no or a few awkward hours exist for all the partners [98]; REPR 20 = Organizing requirements engineering sessions by: ...
Due to specific advantages, the volume of Software Development Outsourcing (SDO) is rapidly increasing. Because of challenges arising from the Requirements Engineering (RE) process, the anticipated benefits of SDO are not achieved in case of several projects. The objective of this research work is to recommend RE practices for addressing the commonly arising RE process issues in the case of SDO. For this reason, a thorough literature review has been undertaken, as well as two questionnaire surveys have been performed with skilled SDO industry practitioners. The surveys have been done by utilizing semi-supervised style and employing Convenience Sampling method. The 50 percent rule and a four-point Likert Scale have also been used to determine the advantages of RE practices for dealing with the issues. A comprehensive list of 147 RE practices has been extracted by conducting a Focus Group session. Furthermore, the 147 RE practices have been ranked by applying Numerical Assignment and Hundred Dollar Techniques during two Focus Group sessions. The detection and adaptation of RE practices aids in enhancing the SDO RE process, evading SDO failures, and achieving the associated SDO advantages.
... Comments about the feedback (13) The collaborative feedback process allows individual development plans to receive inputs and support from other members of the team (14) The mutual perception of the member under evaluation is more balanced (15) Commitment among employees: when employees commit to decisions (e.g. evaluation of a competence), this usually means that issues regarding personal feelings were overpassed. ...
... However, managers and technical leaders stressed the importance of preparing the team. In other words, the team must be mature enough not to interpret constructive feedback as personal attacks (15). ...
Feedback sessions are the moments when the management staff discusses positive features and opportunities for team members to improve their specific abilities. However, the traditional form of feedback, where sessions consist of evaluators and a single individual under evaluation, is not adequate given the teamwork nature of software development. This study presents a strategy to provide this feedback in a collaborative manner and the effects it has on team engagement, agreements, and potential evolution. The results show this strategy supports team members to reach agreements on their level of competences and actions that must be conducted to evolve or maintain such competences. Moreover, there is a better balance in the mutual perception of the member under evaluation, because such perception is a consolidation of different perspectives.
... According to [191], threats put systems at greater risk for major losses that can be difficult to recover. The majority of software programs are designed and deployed without attention to protection desires [192], [193]. Hidden attack risks within or outside the organization are emerging day-by-day, resulting in huge financial loss, as well as confidentiality [194] and credibility losses. ...
Software security is concerned with the protection of data, facilities and applications from harm that may be occasioned by malware attacks such as password sniffing, viruses and hijacking. It is a system-wide concept that takes into account both security mechanisms such as access control as well as the design for security, such as a robust design that renders software attack complicated. It may encompass building of secure software, which comprises of the designing of software to be attack-resistant, ensuring that software is error-free, and educating software developers, architects, and users about the building of secure artifacts. In this regard, insecure software negatively affects organization's reputations with customers, partners, and investors. The goal of this paper is to investigate some of the issues that make the software insecure, as well as the approaches that have been developed to boost software quality and security. The outcomes indicate that various models, techniques, frameworks and approaches to software quality have been developed over the recent past. However, only a few of them give reliable evidence for creating secure software applications.
... Nils Brede Moe et al. [3] indicated that trust is a fundamental factor in determining the success or failure of GSD projects. Some of the identified key factors to be poor socialization and socio-cultural fit increased monitoring, inconsistency and disparities in work practices, reduction of and unpredictability in communication, lack of face-to-face meetings, language skills, conflict handling, and cognitivebased trust. ...
... Besides monetary incentives, there were many other events for motivating employees to experience the hybrid workplace, e.g., customer site visits, social outings with teammates at or near the office, interest group events with academic collaborators and colleagues, and office-sponsored lunch events. Being physically together during these events, cross-function groups could establish common grounds and foster personal trust for efficient collaborations [11], [12]. ...
With increasing demands for flexible work models, many IT organizations have adapted to hybrid work that promises enhanced team productivity as well as work satisfaction. To achieve productive engineering practice, collaborative product innovation, and effective mentorship in the ensuing hybrid work, we introduce a workshop approach on co-designing for a hybrid workplace experience and provide implications for continuously improving collaborative software development at scale.
... Our findings suggest that virtual rooms through Discord facilitates constant informal communication, which improves communication in distributed agile projects [19]. Increased transparency also builds trust, which is vital for distributed teams' success [20]. ...
Effective coordination is the key to successful agile teams. They rely on frequent interactions and mutual adjustment to manage dependencies between activities, which traditionally has been solved by co-locating the team. As the world is adjusting to post-covid work-life, companies are moving towards a work-from-anywhere approach where workers can choose to what degree they want to work from home or office. However, little is known about coordination in such a context. We report findings on developers’ emerging strategies when working-from-anywhere, from an exploratory case study in Norway, including eight interviews. Our study shows that new strategies for mutual adjustment emerged as teams experimented with different tools and approaches: developers chose tasks according to location, tasks with vague requirements are performed collocated while individual tasks requiring focus are best performed at home; large meetings are virtual, preserving co-located time for collaborative tasks; using virtual rooms to maintain unscheduled meetings as they communicate mental presence to teammates, lowering the threshold for intra-team unscheduled talks. The strategies can help organizations create a productive and effective environment for developers.
... Our findings suggest that virtual rooms through Discord facilitates constant informal communication, which improves communication in distributed agile projects [19]. Increased transparency also builds trust, which is vital for distributed teams' success [20]. ...
Effective coordination is the key to successful agile teams. They rely on frequent interactions and mutual adjustment to manage dependencies between activities, which traditionally has been solved by co-locating the team. As the world is adjusting to post-covid work-life, companies are moving towards a work-from-anywhere approach where workers can choose to what degree they want to work from home or office. However, little is known about coordination in such a context. We report findings on developers' emerging strategies when working-from-anywhere, from an exploratory case study in Norway, including eight interviews. Our study shows that new strategies for mutual adjustment emerged as teams experimented with different tools and approaches: developers chose tasks according to location, tasks with vague requirements are performed collocated while individual tasks requiring focus are best performed at home; large meetings are virtual, preserving co-located time for collaborative tasks; using virtual rooms to maintain unscheduled meetings as they communicate mental presence to teammates, lowering the threshold for intra-team unscheduled talks. The strategies can help organizations create a productive and effective environment for developers.
... Distributed development provides particular challenges to agile development when teams cannot rely on oral communication and tacit knowledge sharing (Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald 2006). Trust can be difficult to develop without physical meetings in a development team (Moe and Smite 2007), and communication can be more prone to misunderstandings if it is text-based and asynchronous. A shared mental model can be harder to develop if meeting points are few. ...
Teamwork is crucial in software development, particularly in agile development teams which are cross-functional and where team members work intensively together to develop a cohesive software solution. Effective teamwork is not easy; prior studies indicate challenges with communication, learning, prioritization, and leadership. Nevertheless, there is much advice available for teams, from agile methods, practitioner literature, and general studies on teamwork to a growing body of empirical studies on teamwork in the specific context of agile software development. This article presents the agile teamwork effectiveness model (ATEM) for colocated agile development teams. The model is based on evidence from focus groups, case studies, and multi-vocal literature and is a revision of a general team effectiveness model. Our model of agile teamwork effectiveness is composed of shared leadership, team orientation, redundancy, adaptability, and peer feedback. Coordinating mechanisms are needed to facilitate these components. The coordinating mechanisms are shared mental models, communication, and mutual trust. We critically examine the model and discuss extensions for very small, multi-team, distributed, and safety-critical development contexts. The model is intended for researchers, team members, coaches, and leaders in the agile community.
... They would have contextual and personal knowledge about colleagues, which can promote the development of trust (Wilson, Straus, and McEvily 2006). On the other hand, interpersonal trust is generally considered a more noteworthy feature in groups whose members mostly communicate virtually (Breuer, Hüffmeier, and Hertel 2016;Haines 2014;Muethel, Siebdrat, and Hoegl 2012) and an essential condition for teamwork collaboration and cooperation in virtual teams, where uncertainty is higher (Moe and Šmite 2008;Peters and Manz 2007). Moreover, trust may be more fragile and difficult to maintain over time in global virtual teams (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, and Leidner 1998). ...
Virtuality is noticeably present in organisations and influences the way people interact within teams. This study involved 104 organisational teams with some degree of virtuality and intends to analyze a moderated-mediation model in which virtuality moderates the indirect effect of team conflict on team effectiveness and innovation through team trust. First, results reveal that the negative association between conflict and team trust was significant for task conflict only in teams with low virtuality, and for relationship conflict was significant under low and moderate levels of virtuality. Finally, findings indicate that virtuality moderated the negative mediated relationship between both task and relationship team conflict and team effectiveness only through cognitive trust. Overall, the findings suggest that virtuality may protect team trust from the negative effects of conflict, and they point to the key role of cognitive trust as an antecedent of team effectiveness in hybrid teams.
... DSD introduces new challenges, including navigating socio-cultural norms [25] and establishing trust [26]. Bose [27] analyzed twelve different companies to understand how their distributed Agile software efforts fared with workplace challenges including communication, culture, and trust. ...
... " 2) Trust: Global software development studies suggest that trust contributes to the success of distributed software teams [70]- [72]. Building trust between individuals is extensively studied in remote collaborations (e.g., [73], [74]). In interviews, participants mentioned that trust in their partner (1) decreased if their partner wrote messy code, (2) depended on the importance of the task, (3) was influenced by the pair's familiarity, (4) depended on their knowledge of their partner's skill level, (5) increased with partners who showed vulnerability, and (6) increased when a partner meticulously checked their own work. ...
Remote pair programming research indicates benefits for CS students, increasing productivity, code quality, teamwork, knowledge management, and morale. The COVID-19 pandemic increased the prevalence of remote pair programming. Gender gaps persist in CS classes and workplaces, which may negatively impact the way pairs coordinate, communicate, and collaborate. To understand these effects, we conducted a large-scale survey to investigate differences between men and women as well as same- and mixed-gender pairs. The survey questions were adapted from established literature on gender differences in the fields of education, communication, management, human-robotic interaction, and human-computer interaction. Quantitative analysis of the survey data using ANOVA and pairwise t-tests indicated that women participants reported their men partners made gender-based assumptions about them, and felt dominated and interrupted with men partners. Men participants felt their men partners were more rude and gave more negative feedback than women partners. Further, qualitative analysis of interviews gave insights to several challenges CS students face in same and mixed-gender pairs when programming remotely. Our findings have implications for researchers, practitioners, and educators to promote gender inclusivity in collaborative environments.
... Virtual teams with a high level of trust experience important social interaction, reliable patterns of communication, strong reviews, good leadership, excitement, and willingness to face technological uncertainty. Trust is a key to efficient mutual improvement and is therefore essential for successful teamwork, which is essential for cooperation and productivity [35]. ...
... Virtual teams with a high level of trust experience important social interaction, reliable patterns of communication, strong reviews, good leadership, excitement, and willingness to face technological uncertainty. Trust is a key to efficient mutual improvement and is therefore essential for successful teamwork, which is essential for cooperation and productivity [35]. ...
Software firms are interested in outsourcing and developing of software globally to the virtual crowd for minimizing the product cost and for increasing the software quality. Developments in information technology (IT) have changed the organizational working environment from centralized to disperse development working practices. As a result, companies have recognized the value of virtual world networks that offer benefits such as efficient time management, lower cost of growth, reduced travel costs, and access to larger competent team members to select the right skilled individual. With the wide spread of Web 3.0 applications and improvements in cloud computation technologies, multinational, multiskilled, and diverse crowds carry out the software developmental process. The aim of this research is to select the effective virtual crowd for the development of quality software. The proposed “characteristic-based virtual crowd selection (CBVCS)” method will select the crowd according to their unique characteristics such as their skills, experiences, expertise, and knowledge.
... In a similar context, Dorairaj and Nobel [51] found that collective focus on working together as a team was a key enabler and that building trust over time bridged cultural differences. Furthermore, coordinating work by constant feedback and increasing trust in distributed projects was found to be beneficial [52]. Our study confirmed these findings. ...
Context: Agile methods in offshored projects have become increasingly popular. Yet, many companies have found that the use of agile methods in coordination with companies located outside the regions of early agile adopters remains challenging. India has received particular attention as the leading destination of offshoring contracts due to significant cultural differences between sides of such contracts. Alarming differences are primarily rooted in the hierarchical business culture of Indian organizations and related command-and-control management behavior styles.
Objective: In this study, we attempt to understand whether cultural barriers persist in distributed projects in which Indian engineers work with a more empowering Swedish management, and if so, how to overcome them. The present work is an invited extension of a conference paper.
Method: We performed a multiple-case study in a mature agile company located in Sweden and a more hierarchical Indian vendor. We collected data from five group interviews with a total of 34 participants and five workshops with 96 participants in five distributed DevOps teams, including 36 Indian members, whose preferred behavior in different situations we surveyed.
Results: We identified twelve cultural barriers, six of which were classified as impediments to agile software development practices, and report on the manifestation of these barriers in five DevOps teams. Finally, we put forward recommendations to overcome the identified barriers and emphasize the importance of cultural training, especially when onboarding new team members.
Conclusions: Our findings confirm previously reported behaviors rooted in cultural differences that impede the adoption of agile approaches in offshore collaborations, and identify new barriers not previously reported. In contrast to the existing opinion that cultural characteristics are rigid and unchanging, we found that some barriers present at the beginning of the studied collaboration disappeared over time. Many offshore members reported behaving similarly to their onshore colleagues.
... The benefits can only be achieved if GSD is successfully performed. The GSD challenges or risks can be minimized through an effective task allocation (TA) decision [1].Effective TA ensures smooth development without the need for re-allocation, as tasks are allocated to the most suitable sites considering the development cost, expertise, availability and temporal distance, etc. Factors highlighted as important for effective TA are labor cost and expertise [2], [3], [4], [5], personal availability [4], time differences [5], [6], [7], [8]cultural differences [5], [6], [8], experience of individuals, proximity to customers [5], costs of development, and coupling between tasks [6], [7], [9], [10]. Allocation is usually based on limited criteria; the reported factors are not considered altogether, resulting in project failure, as reported by practitioners [11]. ...
The Global Software Development (GSD) promises high-quality software at low cost. It enables round-the-clock development to achieve maximum production in a short period by utilizing expertise around the globe. GSD is only possible if tasks are effectively distributed among sites to ensure smooth development. Therefore, one of the key challenges of GSD is designing a task allocation (TA) strategy. The main objective of the present research is to develop a framework that takes into account important factors, while allocating tasks to distributed sites involved in GSD. The current allocation in plan-based software development is done on ad-hoc basis and does not follow any systematic approach or framework. The framework facilitates decision-makers in allocation of tasks in a manner that controls delay and re-allocation. The study uses a mixed method approach, where the data used to create the framework is acquired via an industrial survey (58 participants) and interviews (10 participants) with GSD practitioners. The developed task allocation framework is validated with the help of an online focus group with participants (7 participants) from around the globe. The ability of the framework to be applicable in real-world scenarios is assessed from the feedback of industry practitioners. They have highlighted the usefulness of the framework to both, practitioners involved in task allocation decision as well as researchers working in the area. The automation and validation of the framework in real-world GSD scenarios is part of future work of this research.
... Research on collaboration readiness has focused on the influence of individual characteristics such as personality traits (for instance, how extroverted one is), motivation [17], and trust [29]- [31]. ...
Abstract—Research problem: The role that physical, temporal, and cultural distances play in global software development projects has been well researched. Culturally diverse teams separated by physical distances across multiple time zones face significant challenges in collaborating effectively with each other. This article examines a fourth dimension—cognitive distance—that relates to the problem-solving style of teams that can also have an impact on their ability to collaborate successfully. Research questions: 1. Does cognitive distance affect communication among global software development teams collaborating with each other? 2. How does cognitive distance affect the sentiment/emotion
of global software development teams collaborating with each other? Literature review: Prior research shows that collaboration among teams on global software development projects is impacted by practices to manage collaboration; appropriate use of collaboration technologies; collaboration readiness that relates to individual characteristics such as
personality traits, motivation, and trust; and shared understanding in group problem-solving. While shared understanding has looked at the effectiveness of the use of common language and knowledge sharing, it has not examined how differences in problem-solving styles of geographically dispersed teams impact their ability to collaborate
successfully. Methodology: We examined project artifacts and email communication among geographically dispersed teams within a global software development project. From the project artifacts, we examined tasks allocated to different teams. From the emails, we established the communication network and volume of communication, and performed a
sentiment analysis on email content. This analysis allowed us to observe not only the quality of communication among the teams but also the sentiment/emotion that reflected how well they were working together. Results and discussion: Managing teams that vastly differ in problem-solving styles and tasks requires that project managers be aware of these
differences and introduce liaisons that reach across the teams to help bridge the cognitive divide.
... They work on mobile devices and improve transparency the virtual teams (Stray et al.) [124]. These applications improve trust (Moe and Smite, 2008) [125] and transparency in virtual teams, compared to the classic method of communication by email. ...
Modern developments in technology have changed the way we socialize, communicate and work. Globalization, Information and Communication Technologies, digital culture and the increase in the amount of technology available for online communication mean that more organizations are implementing virtual teams. The growth in the use of virtual teams in organizations has incited researchers to investigate the different aspects, factors and challenges of these teams. This article uses a systematic literature review and a bibliometric analysis of virtual teams to identify the most relevant articles on the subject. These articles are then thoroughly reviewed and finally, a summary is made of all the research published over a five-year period. The systematic review of literature proposed by Ramey and Rao [1] and enhanced by Pulsiri and Thesenvitz [2] was used to examine the Scopus and Web of Science databases to identify the theories, research problems, research methodologies and results of 2354 studies on virtual teams published between 2015 and 2019. The main topics of the existing research in the field are reviewed, and the main limitations, problems and existing gaps in research are presented. INDEX TERMS Systematic literature review, bibliometric analysis, COVID-19, thematic analysis, virtual teams.
... Trust is a fundamental aspect of cooperative works [10] as software development. This is the case in collocated software teams and is even more important when operating in a virtual team environment [11]. ...
The purpose of this protocol is to be useful to identify, evaluate and synthesize reported knowledge about the measurement of interpersonal trust (IpT) in virtual software teams. To achieve this goal we applied a research technique known as Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The aim of a SLR is to be as objective, analytical, and repeatable as possible.
... Lack of trust could be the result of "ineffective communication particularly during the daily meetings and demo for customers" (Dorairaj et al., 2012). Other factors that contribute to lack of trust in projects include "reduction of and unpredictability in communication; and a lack of face-to-face meetings" (Moe and Šmite, 2008). Lack of trust can decrease productivity and quality along with "decreased information exchange and feedback" (Moe and Smite, 2007). ...
The purpose of this study is to present the research findings of factors that contribute to making customer involvement work effectively in an agile software project and to explore factors that can provide a hindrance to customer involvement. We conducted 24 interviews with practitioners working with agile software projects in Norwegian software industry. Grounded theory was used to analyze the data. Findings suggested a list of factors that can enhance customer involvement and make it more effective. We called these factors enablers to customer involvement. The factors that suppliers use for effective customer involvement are understanding customer’s perception of success, effective communication, being forthcoming and accommodating, transparency and openness and establishing trust. Factors that suppliers think the customer should pay special attention to are: customer attention, product owner who understands the business, good understanding of technical and functional side and persistent cooperation. This study also presents factors that can hinder customer involvement, thus making the customer-supplier relationship less effective. We called these barrier factors. These are not getting enough customer time, lack of understanding on the customer’s part, people without right skills and lack of communication.
The research was carried out in the Norwegian software industry and grounded theory was used for data analysis, therefore this research can be called context-specific. Research participants interviewed were project managers, therefore this study presents project managers’ viewpoints only. Another limitation is that most of the participants were from the supplier side. This study provides a theory/framework of enablers and barriers to customer involvement in agile software projects. Practitioners can use these factors to enhance customer involvement in agile projects.
Organik gıda tüketimi, günümüzde sağlıklı yaşam biçimleri ve çevre bilinci arttıkça giderek daha fazla önem kazanan bir konu haline gelmiştir. Bu günlerde tüketiciler daha sağlıklı bir yaşam tarzına daha eğilimlidirler. Yiyecek alımının kalitesinin doğrudan sağlıklarını etkilediğinin bilincindedirler. Organik gıda tü-ketmek, bu konuda iyi bir seçenektir. Tüketicinin algısı, toplumun organik gıdaya bakışı ve organik gıda pazarına güven duyması, organik gıda pazarın bütünsel büyümesi için pazarlamacılar açısından çok önemlidir. Çalışma, tüketicilerin organik gıdalara nasıl bir değer atadığını ve organik gıdaların sağlık, çevresel veya sosyal faydalarını nasıl algıladıklarını araştırmaktadır. Bu, tüketicilerin organik gıda tüketimine olan ilgilerini ve motivasyonlarını anlamak için önemlidir. Bu çalışma ayrıca, sosyal çevre, aile, arkadaşlar, iş arkadaşları ve diğer sosyal bağlamların organik gıda tüketimi üzerindeki etkisini araştırmaktadır. Örneğin, tüketicilerin çevresindeki insanların organik gıdaları ne kadar tükettiği veya onları ne kadar desteklediği bu bağlamda önemlidir. Bununla birlikte, organik gıda tüketiminin, tüketicilerin organik gıdaların güvenilirliğine ve kalitesine olan inançlarına dayalı olabileceğinden, çalışma, tüketicilerin organik gıdalara güven duyup duymadığını ve bu güvenin tüketim kararlarını nasıl etkilediğini de araştırmaktadır. Çalışma sonuçları, organik gıda üreticileri, perakendecileri ve politika yapıcıları için değerli bilgiler sunabilir. Örneğin, organik gıda üreticileri tüketici algılamalarını iyileştirmek veya organik gıda güvenilirliğini artırmak için pazar-lama, reklam ve iletişim stratejilerini geliştirebilirler. Ayrıca, politika yapıcıları organik gıda pazarını teşvik etmek veya sürdürülebilir gıda tüketimini teşvik etmek için politika önlemleri geliştirebilirler. Sonuç olarak, bu tür bir çalışma, organik gıda tüketimiyle ilgili tüketicinin davranışlarını ve tercihlerini daha iyi an-lamayı ve bu konuda stratejiler geliştirmeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu çalışmada, 204 katılımcı üzerine bir anket uygulanmış ve bir araştırma modeli önermiştir. Elde edilen verilerin analizinde SPSS 25 kullanmış ve ifadeler faktör analizinden geç-tikten sonra, gerekli testlere tabi tutulmuşlardır. Sürdürülebilir bir çevreye katkı, kurumsal organizasyonların hedefidir. Satın alma niyeti için önerilen ilişki modeli, organik gıda pazarında faaliyet gösteren organizasyonlara yardımcı olabilir.
Distributed Scrum adapts the Scrum project management framework for geographically distributed software teams. Experimentally evaluating the effectiveness of Distributed Scrum is impractical, but many case studies and experience reports describe teams and projects that used Distributed Scrum. This paper synthesizes the results of these cases using case meta-analysis, a technique for quantitatively analyzing qualitative case reports. On balance, the evidence suggests that Distributed Scrum has no impact, positive or negative on overall project success. Consequently, claims by agile consultants who present Distributed Scrum as a recipe for project success should be treated with great caution, while researchers should investigate more varied perspectives to identify the real drivers of success in distributed and global software development.
The objective of this study is to analyze the current perspective as regards knowledge related to what causes stress or motivates developers, how these two aspects are related to each other, and how this in turn affects their performance in the sphere of Global Software Development and how these can be controlled. This paper presents the results obtained after conducting a systematic mapping study of literature in order to analyze how stress, motivation, and performance affect the project members in Global Software Development teams. We carried out a systematic mapping of published studies dealing with stress, motivation, and performance in global software engineering. A total of 118 papers dealing with this subject were found. The literature analyzed provided a relatively significant quantity of data referring to the impact that the characteristics of distributed software development projects have on the performance and productivity of teams, along with the actions taken to improve that performance. However, when focusing on the analysis of the impact of this type of projects on team members' motivation, and on the actions that can be taken to improve that motivation, we discovered that the number of works decreases considerably and that works referring to the impact of this kind of development on developers' stress were virtually non‐existent, as were those concerning ways in which to improve that stress. We are, therefore, of the opinion that it is necessary to carry out in‐depth research into the aspects of working in distributed teams that may have a negative impact on developers' levels of motivation and stress, along with what could be beneficial in order to improve levels of motivation and decrease levels of stress.
Over the years, more and more industries are focused on digitizing their manufacturing operations by using a bunch of advanced technologies like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence based on different equipments and materials, such as sensors, cameras, and lidar. All of them could be combined to wireless technology communication and create an IoT network. In this context, the objective is to present our contribution in the field of failure prediction in Rotation machinery based on diagnosis and prognosis system for predictive maintenance. With the help of the new intelligent diagnostic indicators, it is possible to target default points in real time before taking actions using the stream processing. Machine analysis behavior is a traditional approach used in maintenance field to capture damage and failure. It is also a perfect tool for detecting and then diagnosing operating default in rotating machines.The present work is about predicting the situation using a new Wireless sensor Network in rotating machinery by capturing and treating all the collected data and testing them with Machine Learning algorithm.KeywordsPredictive MaintenanceWireless Sensors NetworkRotating MachineryVibration analysis
Global software development (GSD) term refers to a method of developing software in which stakeholders from many locations and backgrounds participate in the software development life cycle. Software companies use GSD to profit from its many advantages, including cheaper development costs, faster cycle times, accessibility to remote experts, and proximity to the local market. Iterative software development is the goal of the agile software development approach. Customers can add or remove requirements and adjust their priorities after each iteration. This allows them to be a part of the team throughout the project and affords them a lot of flexibility. Therefore to preserve these benefits in the GSD context, the Agile Planning process should consider the many imposed distances, such as geographic, temporal, cultural, language, and organizational ones. This paper focuses on the Iteration Planning level in Agile Global Software Development projects by offering the best agile practices recommended for usage in GSD Iteration Planning based on existing literature.KeywordsGlobal software developmentAgile planningIteration planningAgile practices
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate whether patterns of human resource management (HRM) are converging or diverging across the globe.
Design/methodology/approach
The topic is analysed through a review of existing literature in the space, introducing the drivers for MNCs to seek the global integration of HRM practices, as well as the strategies MNCs may use for practice transfer. The debates of convergence and divergence in relation to HRM practices are then discussed in further detail whilst focusing on two key areas impacting these debates: the cultural factors and the institutional, political and economic factors.
Findings
This paper suggests that patterns of HRM practices are not converging to one set of best practices approach, and there are numerous other factors which influence convergence, such as local business systems, legal practices and cultural differences. This paper suggests that there is a mix of some HRM practices converging due to MNC influence, whereas others continue to diverge.
Originality/value
A holistic discussion is held on the theory of convergence and divergence, which will benefit HR professionals in assessing the state of convergence in their own organisation and common pitfalls to be wary of.
El desempeño laboral es un tópico de suma relevancia para las organizaciones en la actualidad debido a que es un factor que influye directamente en el crecimiento económico de las mismas, por lo tanto, se deben tener en cuenta todos los factores que influyan en el desempeño de sus trabajadores para tener un crecimiento sostenible en las organizaciones. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo realizar la revisión de literatura con el propósito de analizar la información existente acerca de las variables: confianza, innovación, coordinación y comunicación con el desempeño laboral en los equipos de trabajo en las empresas, de esta manera reconocer los factores relevantes y la conceptualización del tema para realizar futuras investigaciones.
Communication is essential in any software development project, particularly those globally distributed where geographical, temporal, and cultural distance may hinder the effectiveness of communication. The challenges imposed by distance often characterize communication as still one of the main drawbacks of globally distributed projects. Therefore, establishing communication processes and practices is relevant to support a team’s work. These processes and practices need to be updated and aligned with the team’s needs. Thus, assessing and evaluating the maturity of such communication processes and practices is paramount. This article presents a Communication Maturity Model called C2M which aims to help organizations identify the maturity of communication-related aspects by providing an approach for revealing what practices need to be improved. The model is composed of 4 levels of maturity (causal, partially managed, managed and reflective) and 4 areas of maturity (people, project, organizational and engineering) which are organized into 15 maturity factors, each factor comprising a set of practices. The model has 58 practices and each has its specific objectives. The model was empirically developed and evaluated in three well-defined phases. In the conception phase, methodological procedures (Tertiary Study, Systematic Literature Review, and Interviews) were carried out in order to gather relevant information for designing the first version of the C2M model (alpha version). Then, in the refinement phase, two focus group meetings were held in two organizations in order to identify how effectively the model attends its purpose. The results led to a second version of the C2M model (beta version), analyzed by a survey with experts who assessed the representation of the third version of the C2M model—omega version (evaluation phase). All results achieved so far suggest that the model can assist in discovering the maturity level of the communication processes and practices in globally distributed projects. Future works will focus on developing a software tool to help with self-assessment.
Global Software Development (GSD) is multi-site software development with software teams scattered across different places around the world. To gain the benefits of the lower cost of software development and access to international talents, many organizations are using GSD. However, earlier studies reported that achieving these benefits can be difficult and GSD involves risks. This paper presents a systematic review of GSD and aim to provide the findings about the current practices, benefits, associated risks, and difficulties associated with it.The review was conducted in accordance with the systematic review procedures and processes defined by Kitchenham. By following these guidelines, six digital libraries to gather information on the prevalent trends and practices in GSD were searched. The outcomes presented in this study are based on 204 studies, published in peer-reviewed conferences and journals. Our findings will enable readers to understand the current practices, benefits, risks and difficulties associated with GSD. As a result, they can form realistic expectations before making a decision to engage in GSD or not, and formulate better pre-contract and post-contract planning in order to increase the chances of project success. A merit of this paper as compared to previous survey papers on GSD is that it reports the issues related to cultural diversity, requirements engineering and software architecture.
With the increasing relevance of decentralisation for the software development process, being aware of the possible challenges and corresponding solutions has become more relevant than ever. The scientific body of knowledge is currently containing many publications about specific aspects of decentralisation, but is lacking in collections that cover more than one area. In this work, the challenges of different forms of decentralisation are examined by means of a literature review. Subsequently, the findings are evaluated and summarised into guidelines that can be applied by project managers and development teams to increase the success of decentralisation of the software development process.
In recent decades, the development of organization software has been expanding across different continents due to a shortage of human resources and to save cost. The development of a software product among different geographically dispersed teams is a very challenging task. Software project management is one of the important challenges between distributed teams. This study aims to investigate project management (PM) challenges in global software development and provide solutions to overcome these challenges. We investigated these issues through a systematic literature review. The most common barriers that we have found are cultural differences, lack of communication and coordination, different time zones, language issues, different organization style and processes, and knowledge management between virtual teams. Our goal is to develop a PM framework for global software development.
Open source software (OSS) is increasingly being developed by hybrid teams that consist of a mix of company employees and volunteer developers. While hybrid OSS teams are becoming more prevalent, they also face unique challenges due to the involvement of different constituents. To address those challenges, this paper develops and validates a new organizing model. Specifically, the paper draws on media synchronicity theory (MST) to theorize that hybrid OSS teams would benefit from adopting an organizing model that involves practicing agile methods and using communication tools with multiple symbols sets and high transmission velocity. The paper also extends MST by conceptualizing the theory's key concept of communication convergence as consisting of two distinct dimensions: affective and cognitive convergence. Using primary survey data from hybrid OSS teams, the paper presents empirical evidence that such an organizing model can enhance those teams' affective convergence and cognitive convergence and, in turn, their development productivity and the quality of the software. In addition, the results show that affective convergence has a stronger impact on hybrid OSS teams' performance than cognitive convergence.
Küresel şirketler tarafında son on yılda farklı lokasyonlarda yazılım geliştirme popüler olmaya başladı.Farklı lokasyonlarda geliştirme ile birlikte, aynı lokasyonda yazılım geliştirmede yaşanmayan yeni zorluklar ortaya çıkmaya başladı.Bununla birlikte yazılım geliştirme toplulukları iletişim, koordinasyon ve kontrol süreçlerinin yaşadığı zorlukları son yıllarda araştırıyor. Fakat son yıllarda yayınlanan çalışmalar çoğunlukla bir kaç şirketi göz önünde bulunduran deneysel ve vaka çalışmalarını içermektedir. Bu çalışmada 2007 ile 2017 yılları arasnındaki deneysel çalışmalar derlenerek zamansal, coğrafik ve sosyo-kültürel açılarından yaşanan zorluklar literatür incelemesi olarak sunulacaktır. Makale kapsamında 607 çalışma incelenerek bulunan sonuçlar araştırmacılar ile paylaşılmaktadır.Sonraki araştırmalar ve çıkarımlar raporun en sonunda sunulmaktadır.
Abstract Software industry is adopting global software development (GSD) due to its potential to produce quality products at a lower cost. However, the GSD firms face many challenges that make development activities more complicated, especially related to the requirements engineering (RE) process. The objectives of this article are to investigate and prioritize the barriers faced by the GSD organizations during the RE process. First, we identified 17 barriers related to the RE process in the GSD projects. Next, the identified barriers were further validated with real‐world GSD practitioners using a questionnaire survey. Finally, we applied the analytical hierarchy process to prioritize the investigated barriers with respect to their significance for the RE process in the GSD domain. The results show that coordination is the most significant barrier category for the RE process in GSD projects. Lack of standard and procedure for RE in GSD, lack of synchronized communication infrastructure, and lack of mutual understanding between the overseas RE teams are also high‐ranked barriers for the RE process in GSD. The authors believe that the findings of this study will assist practitioners and researchers in developing effective strategies and plans for the successful implementation of the RE process in the GSD context.
On the basis of a variety of literature on educational, social, psychological sciences, the conditions for the qualitative life of the educational process are determined, including, first of all, the problems of the formation of morality, responsibility and initiative of the student, as well as his mental and physical health. The true end result is the fact of the fundamental impossibility of replacing full-time or personal education with its detached, irresponsible distance form. The transformation of the educational environment through personalities from each other leads not only to the depletion of opportunities to acquire quality knowledge, but also to intimate loneliness with disastrous consequences for moral, mental and physical health.
Distributed software development is becoming the norm for the software industry today as an organizational response to globalization and outsourcing tendencies. In this new environment, centralized models for software development team building models have to be reanalyzed. Team Software Process (TSP) guides engineering teams in developing software-intensive products and is intended to improve the levels of quality and productivity of a team’s software development project. In this paper, the authors assess the difficulty of using TSP in distributed software development environments. The objective of this assessment is twofold; firstly, know the general difficulty for using TSP in these environments, and secondly, know the caveats to be addressed in future software development team building models designed specifically for distributed environments.
Due to increasing globalization tendencies in organization environment, Software Development is evolving from a single site development to multiple localization team environment. In this new scenario, team building issues must be revisited. In this paper components needed for the construction of the Trust Building Process are proposed in these new Global Software Development Teams. Based in a thoroughly state of the art analysis of trust building in organizations, this new process comes to narrow the gap between dynamics of trust building and intrinsic characteristics of global teams. In this paper, the components for Trust Building Process are justified and presented, with the purpose of a future assembly in further publications, leaving testing of this assembly far behind.
This chapter is written as one method to supply the necessary support systems for educational and training design. As such, the authors propose their global development software (GDS) methodology emerges as a revolutionary discipline. It is based on the externalization of software development between geographically distant places in order to reduce development costs. Traditional educational and training process in software engineering must be advocated to consider (or enhance) this new trend, with its respective challenges and necessary skills (multicultural interaction, effective communication, distributed software project management), into curriculums. GDS therefore demands the presence of supporting systems to provide permanent user interaction and enhanced communication tasks. The presence of such interactions is a key aspect to promote the performance and knowledge acquisition processes among globally distributed software development teams. The main goal of such interactions into platforms that support distributed contexts is to reduce the impact generated by the tyranny of distance. This work exposes some human-computer interaction (HCI) principles applied by the authors’ research team in order to structure a supporting user interface environment that reflects the distributed computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) practice in software engineering. The chapter describes several services that are provided for managing the interaction between participants, such as synchronous interactions through Microsoft © LiveMeeting and Adobe © Connect, and asynchronous interactions such as Moodle forums. In this way, the authors implement effective HCI into educational professional practice scenarios for a distributed CSCL within the specialized domain of software engineering.
Contexto: A internalização de novos membros em equipes de desenvolvimento de software ocasiona mudanças nas organizações e precisa ser estudada. Objetivo: Investigar os benefícios e limitações da internalização em equipes de desenvolvimento de software. Método: Foi realizado um estudo qualitativo em uma startup onde a internalização foi observada recentemente. Os dados foram analisados utilizando técnicas de codificação qualitativa e os resultados foram verificados e validados com os participantes por meio da verificação de membros. Resultados: Percebeu-se que a internalização sofre forte influência da cultura da empresa estudada e do acolhimento e integração do time. Conclusão: A internalização de novos membros gera uma maior sinergia, que ajuda fortemente no objetivo dos resultados organizacionais.
This study investigates the practices of a development team that uses an Agile system of working where some team members and stakeholders were distributed geographically and temporally. The focus of the investigation was to study the dependencies and related coordination activities as the team collaborated on their work, which was the installation and customization of a complex Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software system in this case. We collected data by interviewing eight key team members and observing three team meetings over a 2-month period. We made detailed field notes and used thematic analysis to identify the key globally distributed dependencies in the development process. We identify and discuss the coordination mechanisms and tools that address these dependencies, along with the main coordination challenges. We conclude by discussing some ideas and lessons learned by the participants which we expect to be useful for other teams in a similar context.
Global software development (GSD) practice has been increasingly emerging in the recent few decades in the field of business and software industry. On the one hand, many software development organizations get the benefits of GSD, including but not limited to reduced cost, cheap labor, round the clock working and skilled professionals. On the other hand, these organizations have to face several challenges because of GSD. These challenges pose serious threats to the stability of the GSD projects. Communication between distributed team members is one of the most crucial challenges in GSD. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the communication risk in GSD and also evaluate the impact of these communication risks in GSD environment. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been performed to identify all the communication-related issues in GSD. After that, a conceptual framework has been proposed for evaluating the impact of those issues on communication risk in GSD. An empirical evaluation has been performed on data collected from the software organizations of Pakistan working in GSD based environment. The finding of our study demonstrates that geographical distance, socio-temporal distance, socio-culture distance, team member’s attitude, team issues, organizational & architectural issue and customer issue have a significant direct impact on communication risk in GSD. The study also shows that there is a significant correlation between findings of SLR and empirical investigation (r=0.460, P=0.005). Further, we believe that the results of our research can help to tackle the issues related to communication in GSD. Therefore, it will help to improve the performance of the development activities of GSD organizations.
We introduce electronic process guides, and discuss their role in software engineering projects. We then present existing methods for constructing electronic process guides by defining a set of common processes for a company. Different approaches from the software engineering and management science are presented. We then go on to propose a new way of dealing with process description in software engineering: using process workshops as a tool to reach consensus on work practice. The main reason for this is to get realistic descriptions with accurate detail as well as company commitment in an efficient manner. We describe our workshop-oriented method to define processes, which we have used in small software companies, and show examples of results.
This book offers key insights into how to manage software development across international boundaries. It is based on a series of case studies looking at the relationships between firms from North America, the UK, Japan and Korea with Indian software houses. In these case studies, which have typically been compiled over a 3-4 year timespan, the authors analyse the multi-faceted challenges encountered in managing these Global Software Alliances (GSAs). These challenges range from the conflicts that managers face when dealing with distance, to the tensions of transferring knowledge across time and space, to issues in trying to establish universal standards in a context of constant change, and the problems of identity that developers and clients experience in having to deal with different organizations and countries. Throughout the book, the authors draw on their extensive research and experience to offer constructive advice on how to manage GSAs more effectively.
The process of globalization expands with each year along with the growing complexity of software development. Outsourcing
transforms a common way of producing software to distributed software life cycle activities among teams separated by various
boundaries, such as contextual, organizational, cultural, temporal, geographical, and political. Risks associated with these
boundaries make managers struggle with pressures unique to this type of environment. In this paper we describe a research
that aims to investigate the nature of global risks and build a comprehensive and easy to use framework for risk management.
We emphasize the necessity of awareness about global factors and threats that distinguish distributed projects and require
adequate attention throughout the project.
Global software development projects are passing through the boundaries of a company or a country. In order to manage global teams effectively, it is necessary to define a software process adapted to different organizational cultures. A global software process gives all team members a common language to define tasks and activities allowing the better understanding of the business domain terms and the project milestones in spite of their differences in terms of culture and organizational structures. This paper presents the practices adopted to define a global software process for a distributed environment and the factors that impacted in the process definition
A global virtual team is an example of a boundaryless network organization form where a temporary team is assembled on an as-needed basis for the duration of a task and staffed by members from different countries. In such teams, coordination is accomplished via trust and shared communication systems. The focus of the reported study was to explore the antecedents of trust in a global virtual-team setting. Seventyfive teams, consisting of four to six members residing in different countries, interacted and worked together for eight weeks. The two-week trust-building exercises did have a significant effect on the team members' perceptions of the other members' ability, integrity, and benevolence. In the early phases of teamwork, team trust was predicted strongest by perceptions of other team members' integrity, and weakest by perceptions of their benevolence. The effect of other members' perceived ability on trust decreased over time. The members' own propensity to trust had a significant, though unchanging, effect on trust. A qualitative analysis of six teams' electronic mail messages explored strategies that were used by the three highest trust teams, but were used infrequently or not at all by the three lowest trust teams. The strategies suggest the presence of "swift" trust. The paper advances a research model for explaining trust in global virtual teams.
This paper explores the challenges of creating and maintaining trust in a global virtual team whose members transcend time, space, and culture. The challenges are highlighted by integrating recent literature on work teams, computer-mediated communication groups, cross-cultural communication, and interpersonal and organizational trust. To explore these challenges empirically, we report on a series of descriptive case studies on global virtual teams whose members were separated by location and culture, were challenged by a common collaborative project, and for whom the only economically and practically viable communication medium was asynchronous and synchronous computer-mediated communication. The results suggest that global virtual teams may experience a form of "swift" trust, but such trust appears to be very fragile and temporal. The study raises a number of issues to be explored and debated by future research. Pragmatically, the study describes communication behaviors that might facilitate trust in global virtual teams.
Software development organizations are striving to blend agile software development methods such as extreme programming and distributed development to develop and evolve software systems at Internet speed. Agile and distributed development approaches differ significantly in their tenets, while agile methods mainly rely on informal process, distributed software development typically relies on formal mechanisms. Some organizations adopted practices of blending the unique characteristics of agile and distributed development. These practices are in the spirit of lightweight methods, but have been adopted to meet the competing demands of distributed development as well. These practices have classified into five groups, continuously adjust the process, facilitate knowledge sharing, improve communication, build trust, trust but verify. Careful incorporation of agility in distributed software development environments is essential in addressing several challenges.
lobalization and turbulent business environments are two factors that create significant challenges for software organizations today. In the wake of the IT downturn, many organizations have turned toward globally distributed software development (GSD) in their quest for the silver bullet of high-quality software delivered cheaply and quickly. At the same time, the increasingly volatile requirements in the business environment and the general trend toward leanness have led to a focus on more flexible, agile approaches as a potential solution. Despite 50 years of software development experience, the perception of the so-called “software crisis ” persists in many quarters, with continued instances of software projects exceeding budgets, and development schedules, and exhibiting poor levels of quality when completed—if completed at all. In recent years, agile methods have been proposed as a new, practice-led, paradigm that potentially
This article reports the findings of a longitudinal study of temporary virtual teams and explores the role of behavior control on trust decline. We conducted an experiment involving 51 temporary virtual teams. Half of the teams were required to comply with behavior control mechanisms traditionally used in colocated teams. Their counterparts were allowed to self-direct. Our analysis shows that the behavior control mechanisms typically used in traditional teams have a significant negative effect on trust in virtual teams. In-depth analysis of the communication logs of selected teams reveals that trust decline in virtual teams is rooted in instances of reneging and incongruence. Behavior control mechanisms increase vigilance and make instances when individuals perceive team members to have failed to uphold their obligations (i.e., reneging and incongruence) salient. Heightened vigilance and salience increase the likelihood that team members' failure to fulfill their obligations will be detected, thus contributing to trust decline.
Although trust has received much attention in many streams of information systems research, there has been little theorizing to explain how trust evokes sentiments and affects task performance in IT-enabled relationships. Many studies unquestionably assume that trust is intrinsically beneficial, and dismiss the possibility that the effects of trust may be dependent on the situation (or conditions) at present. This paper theoretically and empirically examines outcomes of an individual's trust in global virtual teams under differing situations (or conditions). In Study 1, we find that early in a team's existence, a member's trusting beliefs have a direct positive effect on his or her trust in the team and perceptions of team cohesiveness. Later on, however, a member's trust in his team operates as a moderator, indirectly affecting the relationships between team communication and perceptual outcomes. Study 2 similarly suggests that trust effects are sensitive to the particular situation or condition. Combined, the studies find that trust affects virtual teams differently in different situations. Future studies on trust will need to consider situational contingencies. This paper contributes to the literature on IT-enabled relationships by theorizing and empirically testing how trust affects attitudes and behaviors.
The study of teamwork has been fragmented through the years, and the findings are generally unable to be used practically. This article argues that it is possible to boil down what researchers know about teamwork into five core components that the authors submit as the “Big Five” in teamwork. The core components of teamwork include team leadership, mutual performance monitoring, backup behavior, adaptability, and team orientation. Furthermore, the authors examine how these core components require supporting coordinating mechanisms (e.g., shared mental modes, closed-loop communication, and mutual trust) and vary in their importance during the life of the team and the team task. Finally, the authors submit a set of propositions for future research.
Discusses the role of trust in outsourced information system development (OISD) projects. Negative effect of distrust on parties involved in the project; Effects of trust; Types of trust; Virtuous and cycles in OISD involving trust, structure and performance; Tactics for building trust. INSET: How the study was conducted.
Despite the increasing attention to global IS work, there is limited understanding of why and how global IS development projects succeed or fail. Based on the literature on IS success and global teams, we develop a conceptual framework for global IS development project success. We also conducted interviews with nine global IS project managers to validate this framework through a qualitative attribution analysis to identify common themes and patterns of the interview results. Global project managers identified time separation, cultural differences and geographic distance as the most significant barriers to project success. Organizations implemented various communication mechanisms, task programming, and project control methods to mitigate global risks, leading to project success.
Global software development projects use virtual teams, which are primarily linked through computer and telecommunications technologies across national boundaries. Global virtual teams rarely meet in a face-to-face context and thus face challenging problems not associated with traditional colocated teams. To understand the complex issues in a virtual project environment during the requirements definition phase of the software development cycle, we conducted an exploratory research study, involving 24 virtual teams based in Canada and India, working on defining business requirements for software projects, over a period of 5 weeks. The study indicates that ease of use of technology, trust between the teams and well-defined task structure influence positively the efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction level of global virtual teams.
Postmortem analysis (PMA) is a practical method for initiating
knowledge management by capturing experience and improvement suggestions
from completed projects. It requires little effort and quickly provides
initial results, making it suitable even for small- and medium-size
projects and companies. The authors describe their experiences with
applying PMA techniques for collecting and analyzing experience in
software organizations
The improvisation in small software organizations and their environments is discussed in correlation with growth in the size and complexity of software problems. The specific challenge in the balance of refining the existing skill base with the experimentation of new ideas is analyzed for the acknowledgement of complex interactions. Statistical process control techniques are advocated as a measure for software process improvement (SPI). Exploitation and exploration are suggested as the improvement strategies for small software organizations to ensure short-term results.
In this paper, we review the research on virtual teams in an effort to assess the state of the literature. We start with an examination of the definitions of virtual teams used and propose an integrative definition that suggests that all teams may be defined in terms of their extent of virtualness. Next, we review findings related to team inputs, processes, and outcomes, and identify areas of agreement and inconsistency in the literature on virtual teams. Based on this review, we suggest avenues for future research, including methodological and theoretical considerations that are important to advancing our understanding of virtual teams.
An abstract is not available.
Scholars in various disciplines have considered the causes, nature, and effects of trust. Prior approaches to studying trust are considered, including characteristics of the trustor, the trustee, and the role of risk. A definition of trust and a model of its antecedents and outcomes are presented, which integrate research from multiple disciplines and differentiate trust from similar constructs. Several research propositions based on the model are presented.
Numerous researchers from various disciplines seem to agree that trust has a number of important benefits for organizations, although they have not necessarily come to agreement on how these benefits occur. In this article, 2 fundamentally different models that describe how trust might have positive effects on attitudes, perceptions, behaviors, and performance outcomes within organizational settings, are explored. In the first section of the model, the model that has dominated the literature is explored: Trust results in direct (main) effects on a variety of outcomes. In the second section of the article an alternative model is developed: Trust facilitates or hinders (i.e., moderates) the effects of other determinants on attitudinal, perceptual, behavioral and performance outcomes via 2 distinct perceptual processes. Lastly, the conditions under which each of the models is most likely to be applicable are discussed.
Our research objective is to understand software outsourcing practitioners’ perceptions of the role of trust in managing client–vendor relationships and the factors that are critical to trust in off-shore software outsourcing relationships. Participants were 12 Vietnamese software development practitioners developing software for Far Eastern, European, and American clients. They identified that cultural understanding, creditability, capabilities, and personal visits are important factors in gaining the initial trust of a client, while cultural understanding, communication strategies, contract conformance, and timely delivery are vital factors in maintaining that trust. We contrast Vietnamese and Indian practitioners’ views on factors affecting trust relationships.
We empirically examine the dynamic nature of trust and the differences between high- and low-performing virtual teams in the changing patterns in cognition- and affect-based trust over time (early, middle, and late stages of project). Using data from 36, four-person MBA student teams from six universities competing in a web-based business simulation game over an 8-week period, we found that both high- and low-performing teams started with similar levels of trust in both cognitive and affective dimensions. However, high-performing teams were better at developing and maintaining the trust level throughout the project life. Moreover, virtual teams relied more on a cognitive than an affective element of trust. These findings provide a preliminary step toward understanding the dynamic nature and relative importance of cognition- and affect-based trust over time.
Trust is the prerequisite for success when a collaborative task involves risk of individualistic or deceitful behaviors of others. Can trust emerge in electronic contexts? This issue is explored in an experiment in which trust emergence is measured in both face-to-face (l-t-F) and electronic contexts. In this experiment trust is revealed by the degree of cooperation the group is able to reach in solving a social dilemma, i.e. a situation in which advantages for individualistic behavior make group cooperation highly vulnerable. The experiment consists of two stages. The first stage analyzes the effects of F-t-F and electronic communication on trust Trust succeeds only with F-t-F communication. The second stage investigates whether a pre-meeting F-t-F can promote trust in electronic contexts- Results are positive. Examination of how people converse in these two contexts sheds some light on the effects of technical characteristics and social circumstances on the emergence of trust.
As modern organizations increasingly operate in a global economy, they need IT support around the globe; favorable economic conditions also encourage the use of offshore IT teams. However, when IT efforts "go global," issues and challenges typical of IT development and support are magnified. In this paper, we review and integrate three research areas that contribute to our understanding and management of global IT support teams: studies of global teamwork practices, small group dynamics theory, and studies of virtual teams. We review key findings from these areas and discuss a case example of global IT support to illustrate the insights possible through these research perspectives. We conclude by outlining an agenda for future research on teamwork in global IT support.
This paper examines the problem of risk mitigation in virtual organizations (VO's). We begin by discussing risk propensity in virtual organizations, and draw on a variety of research to suggest processes important in obtaining high levels of reliable performance in VO's. From this research we identify four processes we think are important: organizational structuring and design, communication, culture, and trust. Based on existing research done in conventional and high reliability organizations, we suggest how these processes may enhance reliability in VO's. We discuss how thoughtful management of these attributes can mitigate risk, and conclude with a theoretical and research agenda for future work.
This paper explores the challenges of creating and maintaining trust in a global virtual team whose members transcend time, space, and culture. The challenges are highlighted by integrating recent literature on work teams, computer-mediated communication groups, cross-cultural communication, and interpersonal and organizational trust. To explore these challenges empirically, we report on a series of descriptive case studies on global virtual teams whose members were separated by location and culture, were challenged by a common collaborative project, and for whom the only economically and practically viable communication medium was asynchronous and synchronous computer-mediated communication. The results suggest that global virtual teams may experience a form of "swift" trust, but such trust appears to be very fragile and temporal. The study raises a number of issues to be explored and debated by future research. Pragmatically, the study describes communication behaviors that might facilitate trust in global virtual teams.
This [reading] argues that […] spans of control, types of formalization and decentralization, planning systems, and matrix structures should not be picked and chosen independently, the way a shopper picks vegetables at the market or a diner a meal at a buffet table. Rather, these and other parameters of organizational design should logically configure into internally consistent groupings. Like most phenomena — atoms, ants, and stars — characteristics of organizations appear to fall into natural clusters, or configurations.
The female prison population has increased dramatically in recent years. Most women prisoners are involved with drugs, and as many as 25 percent are pregnant or have delivered within the past year. Reproductive health and drug treatment services for women in prison are inadequate, if they are available at all, and although illicit drugs are readily available in prison, drug-involved pregnant women often are incarcerated to protect fetal health. Studies of pregnancy outcome among women prisoners have demonstrated high rates of perinatal mortality and morbidity. This article examines issues related to pregnancy among women prisoners and describes an innovative residential program designed for pregnant, drug-dependent women in a state adult corrections system. Social workers can play an important role in promoting policy reform and improved services for this underserved population.
This review examines recent research on groups and teams, giving special emphasis to research investigating factors that influence the effectiveness of teams at work in organizations. Several performance-relevant factors are considered, including group composition, cohesiveness, and motivation, although certain topics (e.g. composition) have been more actively researched than others in recent years and so are addressed in greater depth. Also actively researched are certain types of teams, including flight crews, computer-supported groups, and various forms of autonomous work groups. Evidence on basic processes in and the performance effectiveness of such groups is reviewed. Also reviewed are findings from studies of organizational redesign involving the implementation of teams. Findings from these studies provide some of the strongest support for the value of teams to organizational effectiveness. The review concludes by briefly considering selected open questions and emerging directions in group research.
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.
With outsourcing on the rise, every relation between an outsourcer and a vendor calls for collaboration between multiple organizations across multiple locations. As part of a global IT-services organization with high process maturity, we have had many opportunities to understand the requirements engineering life cycle related to global software development. RE is a software project's most critical phase; the RE phase's success is essential for the project's success. Case studies from an Indian IT-services firm provide insights into the root causes of RE phase conflicts in client-vendor offshore-outsourcing relationships
The last several decades have witnessed a steady, irreversible
trend toward the globalization of business, and of software-intensive
high-technology businesses in particular. Economic forces are
relentlessly turning national markets into global markets and spawning
new forms of competition and cooperation that reach across national
boundaries. This change is having a profound impact not only on
marketing and distribution but also on the way produces are conceived,
designed, constructed, tested, and delivered to customers. The author
considers how software development is increasingly a multisite,
multicultural, globally distributed undertaking
Empirical studies of Agile Software Development: A Systematic Review, Information and Software Technology
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A framework for overcoming supplier related threats in global projects Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory The new product development game
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Going Global Ventures and HORASIS
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Future Organizational Design: The Scope for the IT-based Enterprise
- L Groth
Groth L. 1999. Future Organizational Design: The Scope for
the IT-based Enterprise. John Wiley and Sons: New York.
Studying teamwork in global IT support
- Ej Davidson
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