An Empirical Study for Adopting Social Computing in Global Software Development

Abstract

To manage communication in global software development (GSD) is a challenging and critical task. While practitioners show great interest and attention in social computing. Adoption of social computing is still a hot area of research in GSD. The adoption of social computing and identification of motivators for adopting social computing in the context of GSD is provided in this research paper. To deal with the research objectives we applied the systematic literature review (SLR) and a questionnaire survey of 38 software industry experts of Pakistan. Firstly, by using simple SLR approach we identified motivators in the context of social computing. Secondly, a survey of the questionnaire was established by using SLR. From the findings of this research, we identified the key factors for the adoption of social computing in GSD projects and these factors may include effective coordination and communication information spreading and expert's feedback. The results (t=.552, p=.5863) indicate that there is no major difference between the findings of SLR and questionnaire survey. So, the need is to develop the policies and strategies of social computing for the adoption of social computing in GSD projects.