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Lessons learned by participants of distributed software development

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Abstract

The maturation of the technical infrastructure has enabled the emergence and growth of distributed software development. This has created tempting opportunities for companies to distribute their software development, for example, to economically favourable countries so as to gain needed expertise or to get closer to customers. Nonetheless, such distribution potentially creates problems that need to be understood and addressed in order to make possible the gains offered. To clarify and understand the most difficult problems and their nature, a survey of individuals engaged in distributed software development was conducted. The purpose of this survey was to gather and share lessons learned in order to better understand the nature of the software development process when operating in a distributed software development environment and the problems that may be associated with such distributed processes. Through a clear appreciation of the risks associated with distributed development it becomes possible to develop approaches for the mitigation of these risks. This paper presents the results of the survey, focusing on the most serious problems raised by the respondents. Some practical guidelines that have been developed by industry to overcome these problems are also briefly summarized. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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... Similarly, Lindquist [21] reported that 71% of the software projects were unsuccessful due to the improper management of RCM activities. Sirvio and Tihinen [22] conducted a survey study based on European software firms and reported that 40% of software projects were fail due to poor requirements management. A number of frameworks and models have been developed in order to improve the RCM process [23]. ...
... Therefore, by using the definition provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics [38] regarding organization size, we divided these challenges into three categories based on organization size: "SMALL (i.e., 0-19 employees), MEDIUM (i.e., 20-200 employees), and LARGE (i.e., ≥200 employees)". As the nature of collected data is ordinal, therefore we have applied the chi-square test in order to determine the significant differences among the challenges for all types of organizations [14,22,24]. , to implement the RCM activities, the organization management should be committed to provide the required resources at distributed sites. ...
... Lastly, some significant literature might have been overlooked because of the extensive number of publications about RCM and GSD. Anyhow, this is not a systematic lapse, as in other SLR studies [14,22,24]. ...
Article
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Global Software Development (GSD) is adopted by organizations to develop quality software at relatively low cost. Requirement Change Management (RCM) plays a key role in overall success of a GSD project. The objective of this study is to identify the challenges of RCM process by adopting systematic literature review (SLR) and validate them by employing questionnaire survey approach in real world practices. A total of 25 challenges were identified through SLR and empirical study. We have further classified the identified challenges into client and vendor organizations with an aim to understand RCM challenges in the context of both types of GSD organizations. The identified challenges were also categorized into three core types of the organization size (small, medium, large), that highlights the significance of each challenge for specific organizational size. The results indicate that there is a moderate correlation between the ranking of these challenges in the literature and the survey results. The finding of this study has the potential to help the GSD organizations in addressing the problems related with RCM in GSD projects.
... Development teams face a number of challenges connected with the effort of building up user-centered software architecture. Those challenges are located in the following areas: development tools and environment, communication and contacts, design knowledge, project management, and cultural differences [11][12][13]. Chen et al [14], for example, proposed an approach to bring user requirements, system design, and testing of the developed nuclear medicine software together in a 3-part model in order to meet challenges regarding development tools and environment. Communication and contacts was the second most named problem area identified by Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen [11] and was mainly connected with cultural differences and language barriers. ...
... Chen et al [14], for example, proposed an approach to bring user requirements, system design, and testing of the developed nuclear medicine software together in a 3-part model in order to meet challenges regarding development tools and environment. Communication and contacts was the second most named problem area identified by Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen [11] and was mainly connected with cultural differences and language barriers. According to the authors, efforts should be made to overcome those challenges especially by improving knowledge transfer. ...
... Whenever players who often do not share the same professional background are part of a development process, misunderstandings and uncertainties can occur. These tend to influence the quality of the development itself and therefore of the resulting product [11]. Chen et al presented their approach for overcoming this obstacle which covers the whole product development process from managing user requirements to testing of a final product [14]. ...
Article
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Background The importance of information and communication technology for healthcare is steadily growing. Newly developed tools are addressing different user groups: physicians, other health care professionals, social workers, patients, and family members. Since often many different actors with different expertise and perspectives are involved in the development process it can be a challenge to integrate the user-reported requirements of those heterogeneous user groups. Nevertheless, the understanding and consideration of user requirements is the prerequisite of building a feasible technical solution. In the course of the presented project it proved to be difficult to gain clear action steps and priorities for the development process out of the primary requirements compilation. Even if a regular exchange between involved teams took place there was a lack of a common language. Objective The objective of this paper is to show how the already existing requirements catalog was subdivided into specific, prioritized, and coherent working packages and the cooperation of multiple interprofessional teams within one development project was reorganized at the same time. In the case presented, the manner of cooperation was reorganized and a new instrument called an Action Sheet was implemented. This paper introduces the newly developed methodology which was meant to smooth the development of a user-centered software product and to restructure interprofessional cooperation. Methods There were 10 focus groups in which views of patients with colorectal cancer, physicians, and other health care professionals were collected in order to create a requirements catalog for developing a personal electronic health record. Data were audio- and videotaped, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed. Afterwards, the requirements catalog was reorganized in the form of Action Sheets which supported the interprofessional cooperation referring to the development process of a personal electronic health record for the Rhine-Neckar region. Results In order to improve the interprofessional cooperation the idea arose to align the requirements arising from the implementation project with the method of software development applied by the technical development team. This was realized by restructuring the original requirements set in a standardized way and under continuous adjustment between both teams. As a result not only the way of displaying the user demands but also of interprofessional cooperation was steered in a new direction. Conclusions User demands must be taken into account from the very beginning of the development process, but it is not always obvious how to bring them together with IT knowhow and knowledge of the contextual factors of the health care system. Action Sheets seem to be an effective tool for making the software development process more tangible and convertible for all connected disciplines. Furthermore, the working method turned out to support interprofessional ideas exchange.
... Physical distance makes it hard to carry out f2f meetings. These meetings are either infrequent or almost absent in geographical contexts [11]. Prototyping: For prototyping, f2f meeting helps the developers to administer the process personally to handle any unrealistic expectations on the user's part [17]. ...
... Carrying out inspection electronically is less expensive than a f2f meeting but it is not always effective in clarifying others' contributions [22]. Natural Language: Requirements validation through natural language is the hardest in global context because with increasing physical distance, cultural differences, both national and organizational, also increase and there are greater chances of miscommunication and misinterpretation [11,12]. Removing these ambiguities requires extensive communication between the sites, however, when there is low proximity between participants the attempts at establishing communication and carrying out coordination activities diminish [26]. ...
... NL on the other hand is inherently ambiguous, imprecise and incomplete [28]. It is easy to send unintentional messages when using foreign language [11]. Differences in both functional and national cultures also cause a conflict in understanding [3]. ...
Article
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Requirements validation activities ensure that the developers are working with a set of requirements that are a true representative of users' intents. These techniques face challenges when employed in the global context. This paper describes a four-dimensional framework developed to analyze the communication and coordination problems faced by requirements validation techniques in a global environment. Based upon this framework, it performs a comparative analysis to identify strengths and weaknesses of the techniques in a global context and provides recommendations to increase their effectiveness in a distributed setup.
... Face-to-Face Meetings (Komi-Sirvio and Tihinen, 2005;Battin et al., 2001), Training and Common sense, Terminology, Language trainings and sharing culture issues and customs (Komi-Sirvio and Tihinen, 2005), Trust, Encourage social interaction (Motivation) (Smite and Blanck, 2002). ...
... Face-to-Face Meetings (Komi-Sirvio and Tihinen, 2005;Battin et al., 2001), Training and Common sense, Terminology, Language trainings and sharing culture issues and customs (Komi-Sirvio and Tihinen, 2005), Trust, Encourage social interaction (Motivation) (Smite and Blanck, 2002). ...
... As distance increases communication becomes more problematic and challenging, availability of technology infrastructure, lack of closer interaction, mode of communication and lack of face-to-face interaction (Vanzin et al., 2005;Komi-Sirvio and Tihinen, 2005;Duarte and Snyder, 2001). ...
Article
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The aim of the study is to identify useful Knowledge Management (KM) practices/tools in order to overcome Requirements Understanding (RU) challenges in Global Software Engineering (GSE). As Requirements Engineering (RE) is considered one of the most crucial, human intensive and challenging phase of software engineering. A paradigm shift from traditional co-located to offshore development has introduced additional complications in RE specifically in RU. Issues in GSE like involvement of people from diverse culture, different inter-personal communication and coordination skills leads to RU problems. For this, the need of proper practices/tools to overcome RU challenges in global setting is obvious from literature. So, this study focuses on two things. Firstly, in this study authors have mentioned major RU challenges in GSE which were identified in author's pervious study. Secondly, authors have identified useful Knowledge Management (KM) practices/tools that can aid globally dispersed software development teams in RU. For this purpose, industrial surveys were conducted in software companies involved in GSE. Thereby, useful KM practices such as Document Management, Competence Management and Knowledge sharing processes such as Socialization are identified to address RU issues faced in GSE. In addition, modern and advanced ICT tools such as video and audio conferencing, Forums, Intranets, have also been proposed for overcoming these challenges. Moreover, a detailed analysis is presented that how a specific KM practice/tool helps to cater a specific RU challenge.
... Globally distributed teams face many challenges not observed by co-located teams; for example, cultural difference (Jian, 2012), geographical distance, psychological distance, poor planning (Cheng & Atlee, 2007), configuration management (Al-Rousan, 2015;Komi-Sirvio & Tihinen, 2005), weak monitoring and control, and poor communication among the members of distributed teams (Lane & Agerfalk, 2008;Prikladnicki, 2012). Different cultures of globally distributed teams impact the overall culture of an organization. ...
... Its practices include the establishment of an integrated configuration management system; understanding monitoring and controlling needs of the organization; establishment of the organizational guidelines for global monitoring and control; and establishment, evaluation, improvement, and implementation of global monitoring and control procedures. Komi-Sirvio and Tihinen (2005) believed the configuration management of globally distributed teams is a major technical challenge in a GSD environment. They propose an integrated configuration management system to manage work products of distributed teams. ...
Article
Full-text available
Global software development (GSD), a fundamentally different paradigm from traditional software engineering, has observed continuous growth and lot of acceptance in the last few years. Organizations gain many advantages of GSD, but face additional challenges not observed in collocated teams’ environment. Literature reveals that existing process improvement frameworks do not explicitly accommodate the complex and challenging needs of GSD. In literature, it is found that one of the major challenges is weak monitoring and controlling of distributed teams. In this study, therefore, we developed a process improvement framework to improve the monitoring and controlling of distributed teams in a GSD environment. The proposed framework is constructed by using grounded theory methodology, and it is validated by using the methods of face validity, content validity, construct validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. The detailed analysis depicts that the proposed framework is a valid framework for global monitoring and control in a GSD environment.
... Level-5: Optimization CSF3: Staff Training and involvement P1-CSF3 (Practice is given in Table 4.13) P2-CSF3 (Practice is given in Table 4.13) P3-CSF3 (Practice is given in Table 4.13) P4-CSF3 (Practice is given in Table 4.13) P5-CSF3 (Practice is given in Table 4. 13) Similarly, various practices were identified to address the identified CBs. The CBs along their respective practices are given in Table 5.3. ...
Preprint
The fundamental objective of this research work is to develop a Software Requirement Engineering Healthcare Implementation Maturity Model (SRE-HIMM) that will assist healthcare organizations to effectively evaluate and implement HIS development process. The model was developed based on the systematic literature review (SLR) approach and Empirical results. The 53 primary studies were extracted using the SLR approach and CSFs, CBs, and best practices were identified form the extracted primary studies. The identified success factors and barriers were further ranked using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach. Furthermore, I have adopted the critical success factors (CSFs) and critical barriers (CBs) instead of PAs and available Maturity models i.e., CMMI for the development of (SRE-HIMM). The identified CSFs and CBs were classified into five maturity levels based on the CMMI, IMM, and SOVRM. The empirical investigation was conducted HIS experts to evaluate the findings of SLR. Further, a case study was conducted with the company to evaluate the effectiveness of SRE-HIMM which shows satisfactory results.
... Lindquist [18] presents his views by saying that without proper management of requirement change management business activities, 50% of products cannot achieve their desired goal. A survey conducted by Sirvio and Tihinen [19] tells that nearly 40% of business activities fail by reaching their target due to unplanned RCM tools. Lai et al. [20] and Ramadan et al. [21] presents their views by saying that less attention was given to establishing well-defined tools and techniques in a global software development scenario. ...
Article
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Requirement change management plays an important role in the business world where management in the business scenario is a hard-hitting assignment because of continuously changing customer choices in respect of requirements. Giving no attention to requirement change management challenges result in consumers’ discontent. Main cause of business products is that there is no planning regarding requirement change management. Furthermore, it also affects market value. Dealing in requirement change management, it’s far important to cope with those challenges to undertake the requirement of the business consumers. This article focuses on documentation and control of quality requirement challenges by using an approach of systematic literature review. The main goal of this article is to classify critical challenges being faced by vendor companies in global software development. A total of fourteen challenges have been documented which have a severe effect on the management of quality requirements. Challenges documented by an author like ‘Incomplete requirements’, ‘Lack of Communication & Coordination, etc. are the key challenges harming managing quality requirement changes. Among these fourteen challenges, nine challenges are marked as critical challenges whose ratios are above 25%. The identified challenges were analyzed decade wise where we categorized them into three decades i.e. first decade (1992-2002), the second decade (2003-2012), and the third decade (2013-2021).
... In practice, distributed projects deal with the same problems as classic project teams, which include problems related to the quality management, project scope, schedule and price. Geographical remoteness of the team members of the distributed team only complicates standard problems that happen in project team [5], [6], [7], and [8]. In our opinion, these problems are of different kind and caused by different reasons. ...
Article
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Distributed projects provide major benefits in terms of tapping team members' competencies around a globe, but still they represent a significant challenge for coordinating and monitoring teams' performance. This paper investigates distributed projects with a specific focus on performance metrics. As the result of the research, the list of suggested Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are given to manage distributed project team as well as described the process to define project KPIs and maintain them.
... survey, conducted byKomi-Sirviö and Tihinen (2005) found that 74% of the issues in globally distributed software development have a communication nature. This fact raises the question "How to communicate effectively?". ...
Thesis
This research explores effective communication in Globally Distributed Scrum Teams (GDST) to capture the understanding of effective communication from software development industry professionals, to explicate effective communication tools, to explain challenges preventing effective communication, and to explore how Scrum practices are adopted to keep communication effective. This topic is important because the use of Agile methodologies and the global distribution of teams are significant trends in software development. The abstract nature of the research field and lack of current knowledge in the researched topic influenced the decision to organise the research in accordance with the qualitative method. Open-ended questions were asked during informal conversations with industry professionals who were working in globally distributed Scrum teams and projects. The interviews were organised and actioned remotely. A large amount of data collected (over 130 analytical codes were created during the data analysis) demonstrated a very diverse understanding of effective communication in GDST, different tools used and challenges the participants encountered. The codes associated with effective communication mentioned by the participants were analysed, categorised and considered closely using qualitative content analysis proposed by Flick (2014). As a result, the findings were presented in the form of a framework, displaying the main elements of effective communication in GDST, which are communication transparency, synchronisation, communication quality and discipline. This research provides practitioners with knowledge about the ways to make communication in their GDST more effective. The findings provide not only an understanding of 'effective communication' along with a list of tools, challenges and Scrum practices adopted to achieve communication effectiveness but also suggest ways to organise effective communication to overcome the potential challenges they may encounter.
... Linquist [14] is of the view that nearly half of the business activities fail due to unplanned RCM activities. Sirvio and Tihinen [15] also think same by saying that 40% business process fails by not applying well-structured RCM techniques. Most research work in the form of different models and framework have been done in order to handle issues related to quality requirement change management [8]. ...
Article
Full-text available
In software engineering field, requirement change management is a challenging job. Ignoring incoming changes results in customer displeasure. It may also result in late product transportation. Managing requirement changes in poor way is the main cause of product failure. It has more diverse effect in global software outsourcing. In software quality requirement change management, it is necessary to address success factors in order to accomplish the requirements of the customers. In this paper, systematic literature review approach is used for documentation and scrutinization of success factors. Total sixteen success factors were recognized having great impact on quality software requirement change management. Our identified success factors like ‘Proper Requirement Change Management’, ‘Rapid Delivery’, ‘Quality Software Product, Access to Market’, ‘Project Management’, ‘Skills and Methodologies’, ‘Low Cost/Effort Estimation’, ‘Clear Plan and Road Map’, ‘Agile Processes’, ‘Low Labor Cost’, ‘User Satisfaction’, ‘Communication/Close Coordination’, ‘Proper Scheduling and Time Constraints’, ‘Frequent Technological Changes’, ‘Robust Model’, ‘Geographical juncture/Cultural differences’ are the crucial factors that affect software quality requirement change. Company size and different database have been used for the analysis of success factors. The databases/search engine used are Google scholar, Science Direct, IEEE Explore and Springer for the exploration of success factors. Companies are analyzed on the basis of their size such as small, medium and large.
... Lindquist [36] highlighted that due to the poor execution of RCM process activities, 71% software projects were failed. Similarly, Sirvio and Tihinen [37] reported in a survey study, the key cause of 40% software project failure is the poor management of RCM activities. Various studies have been conducted by introducing the new models and frameworks of RCM process [11]. ...
Article
Full-text available
The software organizations rapidly adopting global software development (GSD) to gain the economic and strategic benefits. Besides, GSD faces many challenges that mainly concerned with the requirements change management (RCM). This study aims to identify and empirically validate the factors that can negatively influence the RCM process in GSD. To this end, literature review and questionnaire survey were conducted for the investigation and validation of RCM challenges. A total of 31 RCM challenges were identified. We have further classified the identified challenges in organization types, organization size and based on experts’ opinions with the aim to provide a clear understanding of the RCM process and its challenges to the practitioners. Based on these identified challenges, we believe that this study can provide a framework for tackling problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to success and progression of GSD organizations.
... 5 A number of researchers (eg, previous studies [9][10][11] have reported that RCM during a GSD project is a challenge due to a higher degree of coordination overhead and frequent coordination breakdowns, which can lead to project failures due to inefficiency and delay. 1,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Despite the significance of RCM, very few studies have been conducted to address the problems of the RCM process in the context of GSD. We believe that a better understanding of RCM success factors will help practitioners to better handle the RCM process in the GSD domain. ...
Article
Full-text available
Software development is a complex task, and the introduction of multi-site development teams spread across the globe makes it even harder. Requirement changes during the software development process are inevitable, and failing to manage evolving requirements is one of the contributors to project failures. Requirements change management (RCM) becomes difficult in global software development (GSD) projects due to the need to communicate and coordinate between stakeholders in a distributed environment. This research work aims to identify the factors that have positive impacts on RCM activities in GSD. We conducted a multi-vocal literature review (MLR) and a questionnaire survey study to identify the RCM success factors. The results of the t-test (ie, t = 0.0347 and P = .700 > .05) and correlation (r s (25) = 0.573, P = .003) indicates that there is no significant difference between the findings of MLR and the questionnaire survey. The identified factors were further analyzed in the context of client and vendor organizations to better understand the RCM success factors in both types of GSD firms. The findings of this study can provide a useful framework for tackling problems associated with RCM in a GSD environment that is significant to the progression of GSD firms.
... Lindquist [29] reported that 71% of the software projects were unsuccessful due to the improper management of RCM activities. Furthermore, Sirvio and Tihinen [30] conducted a survey study based on European software firms and reported that 40% of software projects were fail due to poor requirements management. A number of frameworks and models have been developed in order to improve the RCM process [11]. ...
Article
Planning and managing requirements changes in Global Software Development (GSD) is a challenging task.While requirements change has received much attention from researchers, Requirements Change Management(RCM) process is still an emerging area in GSD. The objective of this paper is to identify the success factors ofRCM in the GSD environment. We applied the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach and identified 23success factors that influence RCM in GSD projects. The findings of the SLR indicate that change impact analysis,change understanding, management support, RCM process awareness, standard for RCM, progress measure,updated requirements and minimize project failure risk are key factors that influence RCM in a GSD project. Wepresent a comparison of success factors identified in client and vendor organizations. Moreover, we present a framework to classify the identified success factors for RCM process implementation. We believe GSD organizations can use the framework to better manage requirements change in GSD projects.
... GSD has also seen a growing demand in virtually every other niche of the software industry, even among traditional companies limited to proprietary licensing. This phenomenon is attributed to a variety of factors such as the opportunity to harness a much larger labor pool, the massive globalization of software companies and the search for cheaper production costs (KOMI-SIRVIO, 2005). ...
Article
O artigo apresenta uma nova metodologia para a coordenação do trabalho de uma equipe dispersa fisicamente chamada Autorregulação algorítmica (AA). A metodologia se baseia em conceitos recentes de redes sociais e mérito individual. Os membros da equipe assumem papéis igualitários e se mantêm logados voluntariamente a sessões de AA por parte do seu tempo (por exemplo, duas horas por dia), criando logs periódicos — frases curtas — que desejam compartilhar com os demais envolvidos nas atividades da equipe. Estes logs são agregados publicamente em um website e são validados pelos pares após o fim da sessão, da mesma forma que se faz na revisão de código. Preferencialmente, um breve screencast é gravado ao final de casa sessão para tornar os logs de AA mais compreensíveis. Esta metodologia se demonstrou adequada para aumentar a eficiência de equipes dispersas fisicamente trabalhando em projetos de Desenvolvimento de Software Global (GSD), conforme observado em nossa experiência em situações de uso cotidiano. O aumento de eficiência é obtido principalmente por meio de: 1) comunicação assíncrona e sob demanda em conjunto com a documentação dos produtos do trabalho e processos, e 2) necessidade reduzida de gestão centralizada, reuniões ou relatórios que consomem tempo. Assim, a metodologia AA legitima e facilita as atividades de uma equipe de desenvolvimento de software distribuída. Ela possibilita que outras entidades disponham de meios para financiar essas atividades, possibilitando que novos e concretos modelos de negócio se tornem possíveis para desenvolvimentos de software muito distribuídos. A AA foi proposta, em sua essência, como uma forma de possibilitar a auto-replicação de iniciativas de atividade hacker. Estes argumentos são discutidos com base em um estudo de caso real de atuação de uma equipe hacker de software livre distribuído chamada Lab Macambira.
... These issues can be caused by improper communication and incorrect exchanged messages. Reports revealed how the lack of communication could affect the project progression, where it was found that nearly 74% of the problems occurred in the project were caused by ineffective communication (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Communication is the heart of implemented projects of the construction industry, where project managers consume 90% of their time communicating with project participants. However, some barriers occur during this significant process of transferring project information. Therefore, this review paper highlights these constraints and guide project managers to take proper action to avoid them. Furthermore, as project communication needs to be carefully managed, this paper introduces communication management due to its high value, all long with the communication management plan as one of the main elements of the overall project management plan that aims to meet the stakeholders' requirements by delivering successful projects eventually.
... These issues can be caused by improper communication and incorrect exchanged messages. Reports revealed how the lack of communication could affect the project progression, where it was found that nearly 74% of the problems occurred in the project were caused by ineffective communication (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen 2005). ...
... Moreover, in Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen view high cost, low quality, low productivity, increased market time, high risks, lack of communication and coordination etc. are the major issue in GSD environment and are difficult to address. Hence, there is a need of effective managerial approach or PM tools in order to reduce these problems [10]. According to Kraut and Streeter, global distribution is increasing its complexity as people are unable to manage the coordination problems [11]. ...
Article
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For the last few years, Global Software Development (GSD) has been gaining the attention of experts and researchers. Because of distance, communication, and cultural issues, GSD is creating hurdles for performing effective project management. In this regard, GSD provides a large number of tools and technologies to facilitate and simplify the work for the project managers. To accomplish this task we have used a framework.The results of the study of 21 existing tools reveal that although GSD tools show dominating strengths in achieving some Project Management (PM)goals, yet much work needs to be done. Comprehensively, there is an ultimate need of a single GSD that could facilitate every aspect of PM.
... Yazılım geliştirme metodu, bir sistemdeki süreçleri kontrol etmek, planlamak ve yönetmek için kullanılan yapıdır. Projenin amacı ve hedefi geliştirme modeli seçilirken önemli rol oynamaktadır ve günümüzde halen çoğu şirket ve kurum, proje geliştirirken geleneksel yöntemleri tercih etmektedir [1][2][3]. Bu yöntemlerin başında şelale modeli, V-şeklinde model, arttırımlı model, spiral model, çevik yazılım ve prototipleme model gelmektedir. Proje geliştirme modelleri bilgilerin analizinde, problemlerin çözümünde ve yazılımlarım geliştirilmesinde kullanılmaktadır. ...
... These issues can be caused by improper communication and incorrect exchanged messages. Reports revealed how the lack of communication could affect the project progression, where it was found that nearly 74% of the problems occurred in the project were caused by ineffective communication (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Communication is the heart of implemented projects of the construction industry, where project managers consume 90% of their time communicating with project participants. However, some barriers occur during this significant process of transferring project information. Therefore, this review paper highlights these constraints and guide project managers to take proper action to avoid them. Furthermore, as project communication needs to be carefully managed, this paper introduces communication management due to its high value, all long with the communication management plan as one of the main elements of the overall project management plan that aims to meet the stakeholders' requirements by delivering successful projects eventually.
... These issues can be caused by improper communication and incorrect exchanged messages. Reports revealed how the lack of communication could affect the project progression, where it was found that nearly 74% of the problems occurred in the project were caused by ineffective communication (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Communication is the heart of implemented projects of the construction industry, where project managers consume 90% of their time communicating with project participants. However, some barriers occur during this significant process of transferring project information. Therefore, this review paper highlights these constraints and guide project managers to take proper action to avoid them. Furthermore, as project communication needs to be carefully managed, this paper introduces communication management due to its high value, all long with the communication management plan as one of the main elements of the overall project management plan that aims to meet the stakeholders' requirements by delivering successful projects eventually.
... These issues can be caused by improper communication and incorrect exchanged messages. Reports revealed how the lack of communication could affect the project progression, where it was found that nearly 74% of the problems occurred in the project were caused by ineffective communication (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Communication is the heart of implemented projects of the construction industry, where project managers consume 90% of their time communicating with project participants. However, some barriers occur during this significant process of transferring project information. Therefore, this review paper highlights these constraints and guide project managers to take proper action to avoid them. Furthermore, as project communication needs to be carefully managed, this paper introduces communication management due to its high value, all long with the communication management plan as one of the main elements of the overall project management plan that aims to meet the stakeholders' requirements by delivering successful projects eventually.
... These issues can be caused by improper communication and incorrect exchanged messages. Reports revealed how the lack of communication could affect the project progression, where it was found that nearly 74% of the problems occurred in the project were caused by ineffective communication (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen 2005). ...
Article
Full-text available
Communication is the heart of implemented projects of the construction industry, where project managers consume 90% of their time communicating with project participants. However, some barriers occur during this significant process of transferring project information. Therefore, this review paper highlights these constraints and guide project managers to take proper action to avoid them. Furthermore, as project communication needs to be carefully managed, this paper introduces communication management due to its high value, all long with the communication management plan as one of the main elements of the overall project management plan that aims to meet the stakeholders' requirements by delivering successful projects eventually.
... Organizations are more and more likely distributing their production globally. They do that in order to catch some distribution fruits including , but not limited to; time-zone production independence, access to well-educated labour, technical infrastructure maturation,and cost reduction [1], improved proximity to the market and customers, and ability to reduce time to-market, Therefore, software development is increasingly distributed to multiple sites involving different cultures. ...
...  Division of work and responsibility into smaller units: minimizing communication-related problems is to decrease communication needs and contact points to a minimum by splitting the project into smaller, independent units managed by a local manager. If no local project manager can be appointed, at least a contact person should be named for answering questions and acting as a contact point (Komi-Sirviö and Tihinen, 2005). ...
Conference Paper
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In the context of Global Software Development (GSD), team members face a number of challenges that needs to be solved. One of them relates to the transfer of knowledge needed to fulfil the required tasks. The knowledge transfer process may be organized and implemented in various ways, as companies use varying strategies to transfer knowledge from onsite to offshore sites. However, without effective knowledge management practices, success in GSD will be difficult. In this paper, we aims to identify the process activities of knowledge transfer in globally distributed teams, challenges and suitable solutions for effective knowledge transfer. In order to achieve this objective, a systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing knowledge transfer literature is conducted. Our findings describing the process of knowledge transfer in globally distributed teams, a set of challenges and recommended practices for effective knowledge transfer. Finally, we conclude this study with a discussion of the directions for further and future research.
... Based on factual evidences about global software development; requirement engineering challenges are due to geographical diversity of stakeholders in multi-site organization, cultural diversity, different languages and time zones [6]. The survey proves that changes in customer requirements creates 70% problem, 52% due to cultural differences in development team, 88% due to improper communication or loss of communication ,70% due to lack of requirement management, 70 % due to co-ordination breakdown 65% due to lack of understanding [7][8] [9]. ...
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Current complexities and high client expectations of an application, the software development is more being an art with a mix of technical experts and managerial techniques. Due to globalization, software and technology are the part of any automated entity. Each and every organization expects a good and reliable software technology working with it. In any domain, building an application is a challenging task due to the lack of requirements gathering or the developer not understanding the actual needs of the client. There are multiple tools to collect the requirements from the clients. The major faults are occurring in requirement analysis phase. Which is considered a sensitive task, any mistakes or wrong perception may lead to major catastrophic for the end product. By considering all facts about requirement engineering the study here gives the basics and some of the key challenges in the requirement analysis phase of software process.
... GSD has also seen a growing demand in virtually every other niche of the software industry, even among traditional companies limited to proprietary licensing. This phenomenon is attributed to a variety of factors such as the opportunity to harness a much larger labor pool, the massive globalization of software companies and the search for cheaper production costs (KOMI-SIRVIO, 2005). ...
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We present a new self-regulating methodology for coordinating distributed team work called Algorithmic Autoregulation (AA), based on recent social networking concepts and individual merit. Team members take on an egalitarian role, and stay voluntarily logged into so-called AA sessions for part of their time (e.g. 2 hours per day), during which they create periodical logs - short text sentences - they wish to share about their activity with the team. These logs are publicly aggregated in a website and are peer-validated after the end of a session, as in code review. A short screencast is ideally recorded at the end of each session to make AA logs more understandable. This methodology has shown to be well-suited for increasing the efficiency of distributed teams working on Global Software Development (GSD), as observed in our reported experience in actual real-world situations. This efficiency boost is mainly achieved through 1) built-in asynchronous on-demand communication in conjunction with documentation of work, products, and processes, and 2) reduced need for central management, meetings or time-consuming reports. Hence, the AA methodology legitimizes and facilitates the activities of a distributed software team. It thus enables other entities to have a solid means to fund these activities, allowing for new and concrete business models to emerge for very distributed software development. AA has been proposed, at its core, as a way of sustaining self-replicating hacker initiatives. These claims are discussed in a real case-study of running a distributed free software hacker team called Lab Macambira.
... According to study conducted by [30], 74 % of the problems of global software development are related to communication. The lack of communication or poor quality often the root cause behind other problems. ...
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In today's world, software organizations have extensive interest in Global Software Development paradigm. The motivation factors behind this paradigm shift are access to most talented and cheap labor, closeness to market and 24/7 model of development. In this type of development stakeholders are located across different geographical, temporal, and socio-cultural boundaries. This paradigm has advantages with some challenges like communication, coordination and control. This study proposed a decision making framework based on MCDM approach to provide empirical evaluation of socio-culture distance risks and their corresponding mitigation strategies during communication in GSD projects.
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Personal communication is one of the factors having high impact on the success of projects. This work aims studying the usefulness of the application of scenarios for development of personal communication competence. Based on literature review, and considering the professional experience of the researchers, three scenarios were developed and applied. The data collection process was carried out in two moments with 24 participants: during a 3-hour training, with observation and a questionnaire to collect the participants’ perspective; after the application, through a focus group and narratives. The results suggest that, according to the participants, the scenarios enhance the development of personal communication competence, but also that it may depend on a good conceptual background support, and that learners demonstrate availability and openness to this type of approach. This exploratory study presents scenarios as an innovative approach to increase the knowledge related to the development of personal communication competence in project management.
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The software industry has widely adopted global software development (GSD) to gain economic benefits. Organizations that engage in GSD face various challenges, the majority being associated with requirements change management (RCM). The key motive of this study is to develop a requirement change management and implementation maturity model (SRCMIMM) for the GSD industry that could help the practitioners to assess and manage their RCM activities. A systematic literature review (SLR) and questionnaire survey approach are used to identify and validate the critical success factors (CSFs), critical challenges (CCHs), and the related best practices of the RCM process. The investigated CSFs and CCHs are classified into five maturity levels based on the concepts of the existing maturity models in other domains, practitioners’ feedback, and academic research. Every maturity level comprises different CSFs and CCHs that can help assess and manage a firm's RCM capability. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed model, four case studies are conducted in different GSD firms. The SRCMIMM has been developed to assist GSD organizations in improving their RCM process in efficiency and effectiveness.
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For a software company, innovative performance is a key factor for achieving sustainable development and maintaining competitive advantage in the market. However, knowledge hiding negatively affects the innovative performance of groups. Thus, this study focuses mainly on how to weaken such a negative relationship so as to indirectly improve the innovative performance of groups. Referring to the literature on knowledge management, we established a theoretical framework based on social exchange theory. We empirically tested this framework by using survey data from 180 software developers in 48 geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) groups. Results show that knowledge hiding exerts a significant negative effect on the innovative performance of GDAD groups. Nevertheless, this negative influence can be effectively weakened by transactive memory system and social media. This model integrates two theoretical viewpoints and highlights how to improve the innovative performance of teams by weakening the extensive knowledge hiding.
Chapter
The purpose of this chapter is to describe and discuss the anatomy-centric approach towards coordinating complex development projects. The content of the chapter is mainly based on my empirical experience from Ericsson.The development of a telecom system must deal with a multitude of technical, market related, cultural and organizational interdependencies. Most often, this requires mutual adjustment across many types of boundaries (Adler, 1999). For example, telecom systems are to a great extent implemented in software and developed on a global basis. The interest in distributed software development1 has increased due to factors such as reduced costs, the access to well-educated labor pools, the possibility of 24-hour development, global presence, and proximity to customers (e.g. Battin, Crocker, Kreidler, & Subramanian, 2001; Damian, 2003; Ebert & De Neve, 2001; Gorton & Motwani, 1996; Heeks, Krishna, Nicholson, & Sahay, 2001; Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001; Karlsson, Andersson, & Leion, 2000; Komi-Sirviö & Tihinen, 2005; Kraut & Streeter, 1995; McChesney & Gallagher, 2004; Ovaska, Rossi, & Marttiin, 2003; Prikladnicki, Audy, & Evaristo, 2003; Sakthivel, 2005).Many challenges already present in centralized software development are aggravated by the distribution. At the core of these challenges lies the issue of coordination. “While there is no single cause of the software crisis, a major contributor is the problem of coordinating activities while developing large software systems” (Kraut & Streeter, 1995, p. 69). The anatomy-centric approach is one possible answer to these challenges.
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There is a growing demand for computer science graduates with the skills necessary to work effectively in the global context. Experience suggests that the best way to learn the necessary socio-technical skills is though participation in collaborative project courses where the student teams are actually globally distributed. However, this pedagogical model has proven difficult to disseminate or sustain due to high adoption costs and the difficulty in finding teaching partners.This chapter describes an approach to building a collaborative teaching community that seeks to address these problems. It begins by identifying the skills students should acquire in a Distributed Software Development (DSD) course and discusses why firsthand experience with DSD problems is essential to learning them. The chapter identifies the attributes that make DSD project courses difficult to develop or teach, and then it describes a distributed team approach to developing a reusable infrastructure and a teaching community to address those difficulties. Future work focuses on building an international community of educators and industry participants interested in partnering to develop and teach DSD courses.
Chapter
There is a growing demand for computer science graduates with the skills necessary to work effectively in the global context. Experience suggests that the best way to learn the necessary socio-technical skills is though participation in collaborative project courses where the student teams are actually globally distributed. However, this pedagogical model has proven difficult to disseminate or sustain due to high adoption costs and the difficulty in finding teaching partners.This chapter describes an approach to building a collaborative teaching community that seeks to address these problems. It begins by identifying the skills students should acquire in a Distributed Software Development (DSD) course and discusses why firsthand experience with DSD problems is essential to learning them. The chapter identifies the attributes that make DSD project courses difficult to develop or teach, and then it describes a distributed team approach to developing a reusable infrastructure and a teaching community to address those difficulties. Future work focuses on building an international community of educators and industry participants interested in partnering to develop and teach DSD courses.
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Planning and managing of requirement change management (RCM) process in global software development (GSD) are a complicated task, but the RCM plays a significant role in developing the quality software within time and budget. The key aim of this study is to prioritize the factors that could positively influence the RCM program in GSD context. To achieve the study objective, the questionnaire survey study was conducted to get the feedback of the practitioners concerning the success factors of RCM in GSD context. Moreover, the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) was applied. The application of FAHP is novel in this research domain as it has been effectively applied previously in various other research areas, for example, supplier selection, electronics and electrical, personnel selection, and agile software development. The results of this study will provide the prioritization‐based taxonomy of RCM success factors and also contribute by introducing the novel FAHP approach in the research domain of RCM in GSD. The FAHP approach assists the practitioners to reduce the uncertainty and vague opinions of RCM experts.
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Requirements Change Management (RCM) is one of the challenges faced by Global Software Development (GSD) organisations as requirements evolution is inevitable due to dynamic business and operating environments. GSD organisations face issues when dealing with RCM because many organisations embark on GSD without understanding their readiness to undertake such an initiative. Currently, there is no readiness model to assess the RCM process in the context of GSD. The objective of this study is to develop a requirements change management readiness model (RCMRM) for GSD organisations. A Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) was conducted to identify the primary studies related to RCM in the GSD projects. By using SMS, 109 primary studies were selected and 73 RCM practices were identified which were used to design the readiness levels of the proposed RCMRM. To validate the RCMRM, initially, two case studies were conducted in two GSD organisations. Based on the suggestions and recommendations of the case study participants,the RCMRM was further modified. The updated version of RCMRM was further validated by two different GSD organisations. The results of the second case study indicate that RCMRM is effective in assessing the readiness of the RCM process in the context of GSD.
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Majority of software development firms are adopting the concepts of global software development (GSD) in order to develop high-quality and low-cost products. However , the requirements change management (RCM) becomes a significant challenge in the GSD environment because of the unavailability of proper RCM framework and taxonomy. The objective of this study is to develop a taxonomy of the challenging factors of the RCM process in GSD. The taxonomy is developed based on the results of the data collected during the survey study and the implementation of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Total 25 challenging factors are identified and mapped into four core categories, ie, "organizational management," "team," "technology," and "process." Moreover, the AHP analysis is performed to prioritize the challenging factors and their categories. The prioritization process highlight that "process" is the most significant category of the RCM challenging factors. The taxonomy developed in this study provides a robust framework to tackle problems associated with RCM activities in GSD environment, which is significant to the success and progression of GSD firms. K E Y W O R D S analytic hierarchy process (AHP), challenging factors, global software development (GSD), requirements change management (RCM)
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Context: Teaching global software engineering is continuously evolving and improving to prepare future software engineers adequately. Geographically distributed work in project-oriented software development courses is both demanding and rewarding for student teams, who are susceptible to various risks stemming from different internal and external factors, being the sources of stress and impacting team performance. Objective: In this paper, we analyze the resilience of teams of students working in a geographically fully distributed setting. Resilience is analyzed in relation to two representative stress factors: non-contributing team members and changes to customer project requirements. We also reason on team collaboration patterns and analyze potential dependencies among these collaboration patterns, team resilience and stress factors. Method: We conduct a longitudinal case-study over five years on our Distributed Software Development (DSD) course. Based on empirical data, we study team resilience to two stress factors by observing their impact on process and product quality aspects of team performance. The same performance aspects are studied for identified collaboration patterns, and bidirectional influence between patterns and resilience is investigated. Results: Teams with up to two non-contributing members experience graceful degradation of performance indicators. A large number of non-contributing students almost guarantees the occurrence of educationally undesirable collaboration patterns. Exposed to requirements change stress, less resilient teams tend to focus on delivering the functional product rather than retaining a proper development process. Conclusions: Practical recommendations to be applied in contexts similar to our case have been provided at the end of the study. They include suggestions to mitigate the sources of stress, for example, by careful planning the team organization and balancing the number of regular and exchange students, or by discussing the issue of changing requirements with the external customers before the start of the project.
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Project management in the context of global software development (GSD) is challenging due to a number of issues. This paper has a two-fold objective: (1) to identify the factors from the literature related to the successful project management in GSD and to validate the identified factors in the real-world practice; (2) to map the identified factors to 10 project management knowledge areas of PMBOK. Our results show a positive correlation between the ranks obtained from the literature and the survey. The results of t-test (i.e., t = 1.979, p = 0.061 > 0.05) show that there is no significant difference between the findings of the literature and survey. Our mapping shows that most of the success factors are related to human resource knowledge area. It is anticipated that the identified success factors can be helpful to practitioners for developing strategic implementation of project management activities in GSD environment.
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Context Global Software Development (GSD) is the process whereby software is developed by different teams located in various parts of the globe. One of the major reasons for GSD project failure is that a number of organizations endorse global development prior to understanding project management challenges for the global activity. Objective The objective of this paper is to identify the challenges, from the client and vendor perspectives, which can undermine the successful management of GSD projects. Method We followed a two-phase approach: we first identified the challenges via a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and then the identified challenges were validated using a questionnaire-based survey. Results Through both approaches, we identified 19 challenges important to the success of GSD project management. A comparison of the challenges identified in client and vendor organizations indicates that there are more similarities than differences between the challenges. Our results show a positive correlation between the ranks obtained from the SLR and the questionnaire ((rs(19) = 0.102), p = 0.679). The results of t-test (i.e., t = 0.299, p = 0.768 > 0.05) show that there is no significant difference between the findings of SLR and questionnaire. Conclusions GSD organizations should try to address the identified challenges when managing their global software development activities to increase the probability of project success.
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In the changing development industry, training for the project team members is necessary to maintain with the most up-to-date tools and techniques. The software development organizations that provide appropriate training to their employees can expect e a higher quality from their development. In global software development as project members are scattered geographically, the training for the employees is a great challenge for the companies. The paper discusses methods for globally distributed technical person training in order to produce an effective and economical product. The paper analysed the use of synchronous and asynchronous training in the distributed software development context. The major facts that affect the online learning, particularly in a distributed environment are discussed. The paper identifies synchronous training as the method to minimize the issues due to time, distance and cost, which are the predominant factors that affect training of a software development team which is globally scattered.
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Global software development is rapidly becoming the norm for technology companies. Previous qualitative research suggests that multi-site development may increase the development cycle time. We use both survey data and data from the source code change management system to model the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization, and explore several possible mechanisms for this delay. We also measure differences in same-site and cross-site communication patterns, and analyze the relationship of these variables to delay. Our results show that, compared to same-site work, cross-site work takes much longer and requires more people for work of equal size and complexity. We also report a strong relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy. We discuss the implications of our findings for collaboration technology for distributed software development.
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Reviews the problems, solutions and open issues in global software development (GSD), in which the software development activities are distributed across multiple sites. First, we introduce the reasons why GSD is becoming more and more prevalent. Then we outline the issues created or amplified by GSD and illustrate various effects it has on a software project. Finally, we summarize the literature on existing approaches to reduce the negative effects of GSD and list key open research questions
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This paper describes a system that supports software development processes in virtual software corporations. A virtual software corporation consists of a set of enterprises that cooperate in projects to fulfill customer needs. Contracts are negotiated in the whole lifecycle of a software development project. The negotiations really influence the performance of a company. Therefore, it is useful to support negotiations and planning decisions with software agents. Our approach integrates software agent approaches for negotiation support with flexible multiserver workflow engines
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Open distributed systems are increasingly used to support business transactions within and across organisations. In order to achieve this goal, fundamental concepts of business practices should be incorporated into a supporting architecture. Support for business contracts can be regarded as an essential ingredient of such an architecture in terms of facilitating more efficient inter-organisational business interactions. This is augmented by the prevailing feeling in business today that global interdependencies are becoming more critical for gaining and maintaining the competitive edge. In this paper we make an initial attempt to identify important contract concepts from economic and legal standpoints and use them to derive a business contract framework. We further discuss how these concepts can be incorporated into an architecture for open distributed processing (ODP)
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Leveraging global resources for software development is rapidly becoming the norm at Motorola, which has over 25 software development centers worldwide. Our project, called the 3G Trial (Third Generation Cellular System), was the first of its scope and significance developed by a global engineering team at Motorola. Staffing was the most significant issue we encountered in the 3G Trial. We had only about 20 percent of the required staff available at our division headquarters in Burlington Heights, Ill., US, and needed to find the other 80 percent to successfully complete the project. Early on, we concluded that our only means to staff the project was to rely on software development engineers from Motorola's worldwide software centers. We developed the system with staffing from six different countries. Next, we had to integrate the people into a team. While addressing this challenge, we identified key risk factors and developed approaches to reduce them. We separated the project risk factors into the five categories Carmel (1999) describes as the centrifugal forces that pull global projects apart. To pass on the lessons we learned from this project, this article sets out the global development issues we faced, our approaches to resolving them, and our findings compared to other research
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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
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World software production and consumption are largely concentrated in North America, Western Europe, and parts of the Far East. However, technology is advancing and dispersing at a rapid pace, creating an opportunity for less-developed nations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions to increase their share of the growing global software-production market. The author describes the current software market and details the economic, political, and technological changes that facilitate software export from developing nations. The author outlines three forms of software export, and product development. He indicates where these activities are taking place and suggests some company strategies. The author next examines some of the steps governments can take to stimulate software export in their countries - steps such as subsidizing telecommunications, establishing research institutes and university programs, offering tax and financial incentives, reducing trade barriers, planning and coordinating industry efforts, marketing collectively, and enacting and enforcing copyright laws. Less-developed nations may achieve a significant market share in the not-too-distant future. Edward Yourdon has stated that mass unemployment among US programmers is possible by the end of this decade. Although most observers doubt such a development will occur, the US and other nations that lead the world in the programming sphere can expect to see serious competition from the developing nations.
A distributed software project management tool Proceedings of the 8th International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infra-structure for Collaborative Enterprises Peer-to-peer repository for distributed configuration management Support-ing business contracts in open distributed systems
  • R Surjaputra
  • Usa P Maheswari
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  • A Hoeak
  • D Heimbigner
  • Al Wolf
  • A Berry
  • A Bond
  • Raymond
Surjaputra R, Maheswari P. 1999. A distributed software project management tool. In IEEE Proceedings of the 8th International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infra-structure for Collaborative Enterprises, USA. Van der Hoeak A, Heimbigner D, Wolf AL. 1996. Peer-to-peer repository for distributed configuration management. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE ’96), Berlin; 308–317. Zoran M, Berry A, Bond A, Raymond K. 1995. Support-ing business contracts in open distributed systems. In Proceedings of SDNE ’95. IEEE Computer Society Press: Whistler, Canada. RESEARCH ARTICLE Knowledge and Process Management 122 S. Komi-Sirvio ¨ and M. Tihinen
A distributed software project management tool Peer-to-peer repository for distributed configuration management
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