Distributed Software Development Teams Research Articles

Agile tailoring in distributed large-scale environments using agile frameworks: A Systematic Literature Review

With the increasing adoption of agile methodologies in distributed software development teams, there is a need to adapt these practices for large-scale environments. However, the lack of specific guidance can make this process difficult. To evaluate how large-scale agile distributed teams adapt their practices to meet their specific contexts, this study launches a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The SLR presents adaptations of agile methodologies in distributed software development teams operating in large-scale environments. With the growing popularity of agile methodologies, there is an increasing need to adapt them to suit the specific needs of distributed teams operating in large-scale contexts. The review identified 96 adapted practices from five agile frameworks (Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), the Spotify model, and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD)) used in various case studies between 2007 and 2021. Scrum was the most commonly adapted framework with 32 customized practices, followed by SAFe (25), LeSS (17), the Spotify model (13), and DAD (9). The review provides insights into how these practices have been tailored to meet the needs of distributed teams in large-scale contexts. The findings can guide organizations in adapting agile practices to their specific contexts.

Evaluating MIDST, A System to Support Stigmergic Team Coordination

Data science teams working on a shared analysis face coordination problems such as dividing up the work to be done, monitoring performance and integrating the pieces. Research on distributed software development teams has raised the potential of stigmergic coordination, that is, coordination through a shared work product in place of explicit communication. The MIDST system was developed to support stigmergic coordination by making individual contributions to a shared work product visible, legible and combinable. In this paper, we present initial studies of a total of 40 student teams (24 using MIDST) that shows that teams that used MIDST did experience the intended system affordances to support their work, did seem to coordinate at least in part stigmergically and performed better on an assigned project.

Effective Communication among Globally Distributed Software Development Teams

Global software development, an emerging software development methodology within a technology-enabled environment has recently received increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite the fact that the lack of effective communication is a major challenge of globally distributed teams, communication research related to the scale development is still very limited in existing literature. Considering the communication challenges and increasing need to measure the effectiveness of communication, this research is focused to develop a scale for “Effective Communication” for globally distributed software development teams. Systematic literature review is performed to identify the best practices of effective communication for the development of “Effective Communication” scale. A questionnaire survey consisting of 29 items is administered in globally distributed software development teams. Confirmatory factor analysis and statistical results depicted that the four-factor model (e.g. stakeholders' involvement, acculturation, usage of appropriate tools and technology, and information availability) is more parsimonious and an optimal model fit.

Effective Communication among Globally Distributed Software Development Teams

Global software development, an emerging software development methodology within a technology-enabled environment has recently received increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite ...

Global Monitoring and Control: A Process Improvement Framework for Globally Distributed Software Development Teams

ABSTRACTGlobal 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.

Empirical study of communication structures and barriers in geographically distributed teams

Conway's law asserts that communication structures of organisations constrain the design of the products they develop. This law is more explicitly observable in geographically distributed contexts because distributed teams are required to share information across different time zones and barriers. The diverse business processes and functions adopted by individual teams in geographically distributed settings create challenges for effective communication. Since the publication of Conway's law, a significant body of research has emerged in its relation to the communication structures. When it comes to software projects, the explicit observation about Conway's law has produced mixed results. The research reported in this study explores the communication structures and corresponding challenges faced by teams within a large geographically distributed software development organisation. The data was collected from relevant documents, a questionnaire and interviews with relevant stakeholders. The findings suggest that Conway's law is observable within the communication structures of globally distributed software development teams. The authors have identified the barriers and challenges of effective communications in this setting and have investigated the benefits of utilising an integrated system to overcome these challenges.

Perceived Risks and Ict Use

The objective of this research is to investigate the types of problems and their associated perceived risks as well as the effects of risks perceived on frequently used information communication technologies (ICTs) by globally distributed software development teams. We focused on perceived risk in reception, understanding and action and studied two global software teams that were at different software development phases (i.e. requirements analysis versus development and maintenance). Data for this research was collected from a leading global IT consulting company and we found that instant messaging, email and teleconferencing system were frequently used by the two teams. Our results indicate that perceived risks in reception and action were encountered by members in the systems development and maintenance phase. Additionally, we also found differences on the effects of perceived risks on the use of instant messaging, email and teleconferencing system between the teams.

Architecture of a Software Configuration Management System for Globally Distributed Software Development Teams

The phenomenon of global software development has changed the traditional methods of software engineering. Along with several benefits, globalization brings lot of challenges for practitioners of global software development. Among all challenges, establishment of a configuration management system for distributed teams is one of the major technical challenges. Therefore, in this study, it has been investigated that what type of configuration management system should be established and what should be its architecture for globally distributed software development teams. It has been proposed that a centralized configuration management system, designed on the principles of multitenancy is the appropriate architecture for configuration management system for globally distributed software development teams. General Terms Global Software Engineering, Configuration Management.

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

SUMMARYA software architecture evaluation process requires a large number of stakeholders to be collocated for evaluation sessions. Given an increasing trend to using globally distributed software development teams, organizations are likely to be discouraged from introducing disciplined software architecture evaluation practices that require collocated stakeholders. To address this issue, we propose that a software architecture evaluation can be carried out using suitable groupware systems. In this paper, we present a framework for supporting the software architecture evaluation process using a groupware system. The framework highlights the changes that are required in the existing software architecture evaluation methods. We provide an illustrated example of modeling and mapping the activities of the presented process on electronic workspaces provided by a groupware system. We also identify some of the features that a groupware system should provide to successfully support the process. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evolution of cognitive trust in distributed software development teams: a punctuated equilibrium model

A significant body of literature has addressed trust in distributed teams. However, several important issues such as 1) trust in distributed software development teams, 2) the evolution of cognitive trust, and 3) the role of communication media in trust development have not been adequately addressed. The objective of this paper is to address the void discussed above by conducting a longitudinal study to examine the evolution of cognitive trust among distributed software development teams from USA and Norway or Switzerland. The results suggest that cognitive trust develops in accordance with the tenets of the Punctuated Equilibrium Model (PEM). Additionally, our study also suggests that different factors are important for trust building during the different stages of a software development project. The findings contribute to the body of trust research and to practice by identifying stages in a software development project during which managerial intervention can help elevate trust levels.

Factors that Inhibit Globally Distributed Software Development Teams

Globally distributed teams can frequently have problems specifically related to the distance and differences among team members. This paper synthesizes literature related to globally distributed software development teams to find the factors that inhibit team success. This research indicates that cultural differences, trust, communication, shared mental models, temporal agility, and work transitions can all cause problems on globally distributed software development teams. This research can help both researchers and practitioners gain valuable insights on factors that can affect the performance of globally distributed teams.

Social networks and coordination performance of distributed software development teams

In this study, we explore the coordination performance of the geographically distributed software development teams by exploring OSS (Open Source Software) development dataset available through SourceForge.com. OSS team structures have traditionally been geographically dispersed and therefore, the coordination of post release activities such as testing efforts have been carried out by means of communication via electronic forms, such as email or message boards and forums. In our current communication-enriched environment, best practices for coordination are adopted by all software projects yet some still fail to achieve their target performance. Does team structure have any bearing on the performance outcome of the project? How does the communication between teams and their external parties affect ultimate success or failure of projects? We seek to answer above questions by applying existing theories and analytical methods from social networks for exploring the coordination performance of defect management activities found in OSS projects. We propose social networks based theoretical model for exploring distributed coordination structure and apply that for the case of OSS defect management process for exploring the structural properties, which induce the greatest coordination performance. The outcome of our suggest that there is correlation between certain network measures such as density, centrality and betweenness and coordination performance measures of defect management systems such as quality and timeliness.

The Use of Information Systems by Collocated and Distributed Teams: Towards the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory

Recent academic and policy studies focus on off shoring as a cost-of-labor driven activity that has a direct impact on employment opportunities in the countries involved. This paper broadens this perspective by examining the 24-hour knowledge factory as a model of information systems off shoring that leverages other strategic factors beyond cost savings. A true 24-hour knowledge factory can ensure that progress is made on tasks at all times of day by utilizing three or more sets of information systems professionals, located at strategically selected locations around the globe. Some organizations today utilize a service provider framework in which an offshore site provides service to the central site. Entire tasks are often outsourced to the lower-cost overseas site and sent back when completed. In contrast, the 24-hour knowledge factory involves continuous and collaborative activities round-the-clock. By organizing tasks in this manner, the 24-hour knowledge factory offers the potential to reduce turnaround time to complete tasks, to reduce total costs, and to provide better overall performance. Previous studies have examined the performance of individual teams over time and have explored the benefits of distributing work to distant teams, but have not directly compared the effect of collocation versus geographic distribution in the context of the use of emerging information system technologies and methodologies. Since the concept of the 24-hour knowledge factory is still in the early stages of practice for semi-structured tasks, a controlled field experiment was conducted using two distributed centers in which the tasks were performed in a sequential manner. The use of information systems and the overall performance were studied using a collocated software development team and a distributed software development team. While the two teams used information systems in dissimilar ways at key points during a project, the overall performance of the two teams was largely similar at the macro level but differed at the micro level. In other words, one organizational structure is not inherently superior to the other, in terms of the ability to meet stated goals. While spatial and temporal separations introduce new challenges, these can be overcome with the deployment of appropriate collaboration technologies - and even leveraged for strategic advantage. In sum, our findings suggest that firms can apply the two-center and three-center work models to transition from a service provider framework in which off shoring is a short-term and unilateral cost-saving tactic to a strategic partnership between centers in which off shoring becomes a core component of the global corporate strategy.

Re-Engineering at LeCroy Corporation: The Move to Component-Based Systems

This case study discusses two related aspects that are becoming increasingly important in today's software development practice: re-engineering of a monolithic system into a component-based system (the focus of this case) and globally distributed work. Component-based (software) development (CBD) involves (i) the development of software components and (ii) the building of software systems through the integration of preexisting software components (developed in-house or procured from the component market). For companies involved in software development, CBD offers agility in design by basing software development on methodologies that support the recombination of reusable components, being an approach that rapidly expands product variation and sustains the build-up of product families. It also promises significant improvements in software development through shorter time-to-market and reduced development costs. However, being an innovative approach to software development that emerged in the mid-1990s, the adoption of CBD requires companies to re-engineer existing software systems (products) or to develop new systems from scratch using component technologies and to deal with additional challenges associated with the management of CBD. LeCroy Corporation was one of the early adopters of CBD that decided to adopt CBD to gain competitive advantage in its markets. The case describes an actual situation at LeCroy Corporation, involving several decisions, challenges and opportunities faced by the managers of a globally distributed software development team over a period of time when they re-engineered a monolithic system into a component-based system.

Harbinger of the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory

Recent academic and policy studies focus on offshoring as a cost-of-labor driven activity that has a direct impact on employment opportunities in the countries involved. This paper broadens this perspective by introducing and evaluating the 24-hour knowledge factory as a model of information systems offshoring that leverages other strategic factors beyond cost savings. A true 24-hour knowledge factory ensures that progress is being made on information systems related tasks at all times of day by utilizing talented information systems professionals around the globe. Many organizations currently implement other variants of offshoring that appear similar but are fundamentally distinct. The typical model is a service provider framework in which an offshore site provides service to the central site, often with two centers and a distinction between a primary center and secondary center. Entire tasks are often outsourced to the lower-cost overseas site and sent back when completed. In contrast, the 24-hour knowledge factory involves continuous and collaborative round-the-clock knowledge production achieved by sequentially and progressively distributing the knowledge creation task around the globe, completing one cycle every 24 hours. Thus, the 24-hour knowledge factory creates a virtual distributed team, in contrast to a team that is collocated in one site, either onshore or offshore. By organizing knowledge tasks in this way, the 24-hour knowledge factory has the potential to work faster, to provide cheaper solutions, and to achieve better overall performance. Previous studies have examined individual teams over time and explored various benefits of distributing work to distant teams, but have not directly compared the effect of collocation versus geographic distribution on the use of information systems and the overall performance over time of two real-world teams working on a similar task in controlled conditions. This paper highlights the concept of the 24-hour knowledge factory and tests the model in a controlled field experiment that directly compares the use of information systems and subsequent performance in collocated and globally distributed software development teams. The central finding is that while collocation versus geographic distribution changes the way teams use information systems and interact at key points during a project, each type of team has the potential to use information systems to leverage its inherent advantages, to overcome disadvantages, and ultimately, to perform equally well. In other words, one organizational structure is not inherently superior nor must structure pre-determine performance. Geographic distance introduces new challenges but these can be overcome and even leveraged for strategic advantage. In sum, our findings suggest that firms can apply the 24-hour knowledge factory model to transition from a service provider framework in which offshoring is a short-term and unilateral cost-saving tactic to a strategic partnership between centers in which offshoring becomes a core component of a global corporate strategy.

Globally Distributed Component-Based Software Development: An Exploratory Study of Knowledge Management and Work Division

Component-based development (CBD) can be an appealing proposition to globally distributed software development teams because of the almost endless possibilities to recombine and reuse components in new products. In particular, it has been suggested that CBD will improve globally distributed software development practices by allowing each site to take ownership of particular components, resulting in reduced inter-site communication and coordination activities. Such an approach may indeed overcome breakdowns in inter-site coordination efforts; however, it may also lessen opportunities to share knowledge between sites and may hamper opportunities to reuse existing components. A case study approach, exploratory in nature, was adopted to explore knowledge aspects in global component-based software development. Evidence collected at several globally distributed CBD projects suggests that the true potential of CBD, which mainly relates to reusing components, can also be achieved when components are developed in a joint manner (i.e. by several sites) by accessing and utilizing expertise regardless of its geographical location. To improve the rate of component reuse, the studied teams developed capabilities in three particular areas: inter-site coordination, communications, and knowledge management. The paper concludes by discussing the links between component reuse, CBD principles and organizational capabilities, and offers managers and engineers some guidelines to consider in their CBD projects.

The Use of Information Systems in Collocated and Distributed Teams: A Test of the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory

Recent academic and policy studies focus on offshoring as a cost-of-labor driven activity that has a direct impact on employment opportunities in the countries involved. This paper broadens this perspective by introducing and evaluating the 24-hour knowledge factory as a model of information systems offshoring that leverages other strategic factors beyond cost savings. A true 24-hour knowledge factory ensures that progress is being made on information systems related tasks at all times of day by utilizing talented information systems professionals around the globe. Many organizations currently implement other variants of offshoring that appear similar but are fundamentally distinct. The typical model is a service provider framework in which an offshore site provides service to the central site, often with two centers and a distinction between a primary center and secondary center. Entire tasks are often outsourced to the lower-cost overseas site and sent back when completed. In contrast, the 24-hour knowledge factory involves continuous and collaborative round-the-clock knowledge production achieved by sequentially and progressively distributing the knowledge creation task around the globe, completing one cycle every 24 hours. Thus, the 24-hour knowledge factory creates a virtual distributed team, in contrast to a team that is collocated in one site, either onshore or offshore. By organizing knowledge tasks in this way, the 24-hour knowledge factory has the potential to work faster, to provide cheaper solutions, and to achieve better overall performance. Previous studies have examined individual teams over time and explored various benefits of distributing work to distant teams, but have not directly compared the effect of collocation versus geographic distribution on the use of information systems and the overall performance over time of two real-world teams working on a similar task in controlled conditions. This paper highlights the concept of the 24-hour knowledge factory and tests the model in a controlled field experiment that directly compares the use of information systems and subsequent performance in collocated and globally distributed software development teams. The central finding is that while collocation versus geographic distribution changes the way teams use information systems and interact at key points during a project, each type of team has the potential to use information systems to leverage its inherent advantages, to overcome disadvantages, and ultimately, to perform equally well. In other words, one organizational structure is not inherently superior nor must structure pre-determine performance. Geographic distance introduces new challenges but these can be overcome - and even leveraged for strategic advantage. In sum, our findings suggest that firms can apply the 24-hour knowledge factory model to transition from a service provider framework in which offshoring is a short-term and unilateral cost-saving tactic to a strategic partnership between centers in which offshoring becomes a core component of a global corporate strategy.

Merging project planning and Web enabled dynamic workflow technologies

The MILOS system supports dynamic coordination of distributed software development teams by integrating project planning and workflow technologies over the Internet. The three-tiered Java architecture enables plan refinements to be made on the fly, and a change management component automatically creates traceability relationships between project entities.