Distributed Software Projects Research Articles

Global Manager: A Serious Game to Raise Awareness of the Challenges of Being a Project Manager in Global Software Development

Project managers tend to confront multiple challenges in Global Software Development (GSD), including misunderstandings about the project requirements, complex estimations of costs, risks, and efforts, along with increases in task allocation and a lack of coordination. “Soft skills” play a fundamental role in solving these challenges, as they are the human or social abilities that facilitate the resolution of conflicts and involve dealing with people and managing projects in their most social and creative dimension. However, developing the soft skills that allow project managers to lead in an effective manner is not an easy task, especially in global or distributed environments, where coordination and control problems are commonplace. One suitable mechanism with which to develop these soft skills is that of serious games, which focus on learning by doing and allow users to simulate real scenarios. The authors of this article are aware of the usefulness of this type of teaching method and have, therefore, developed the serious game described herein. This serious game is denominated as Global Manager and is focused on helping both students and novice project managers to become aware of the factors that may affect GSD projects. Global Manager was evaluated by means of a quasi-experiment based on a pretest-posttest design, which was used to assess whether the game can increase the players’ awareness and knowledge of the factors that a project manager should consider in GSD projects. The results obtained after evaluating the game were quite satisfactory, as the game taught the players to differentiate between global and distributed software projects and to experience situations that may and do occur in these settings. Furthermore, Global Manager helped improve players' perceptions of the importance of different influencing factors in GSD.

Pull Request Governance in Open Source Communities

Pull requests facilitate inclusion and improvement of contributions in distributed software projects, especially in open source communities. An author makes a pull request to present a contribution as a candidate for inclusion in a code base. The request is inspected by maintainers and reviewers. The initiated process of review and collaborative improvement can be loaded with debates, opinions, and emotions. It heavily influences the atmosphere in the community. It can demotivate and detract contributors or it can fail to guard the code quality. Both problems put the existence of a community at risk. This mixed methods study aims to elucidate the mechanisms of evaluating pull requests in diverse open source software communities from the perspectives of developers and maintainers. We interviewed 30 participants from five different communities and conducted a survey with N=387 respondents. The data shows that acceptance of contributions in open source depends not only on technical criteria, but also significantly on social and strategic aspects. As a result, we identify three governance styles for pull requests: (1) protective, (2) equitable, and (3) lenient. While the protective style values trustworthiness and reliability of the contributor, the lenient style believes in creating a positive and welcoming environment where contributors are mentored to evolve contributions until the community standards are met. Each of the governance styles safeguards the quality of the project code in different ways. We hope that this material will help researchers and community managers to obtain a more nuanced view on the peculiarities of different communities and the strengths and weakness of their pull requests evaluation process.

Complexity Estimation for Distributed Software Development Using SRS

In recent years distributed software development has gathered pace. Many development programmes now require asynchronous coordination several time zones apart between geographically dispersed teams. Owing to considerations such as effort spent on team development and technology sharing, software complexity calculation for such projects is difficult to establish a software system infrastructure that can be efficiently spread and minimizes cross-site connectivity, enabling communication between remote teams working on interrelated sections of the architecture and their day-to-day interactions. A globally distributed software project faces, in addition to the technological complexity, an additional complexity contributed by the different supporting parameters. This paper defines these parameters and attempts to estimate all the complexities described above and incorporate these two measures to obtain the corresponding overall measure of complexity during the requirement analysis phase.

A study of business knowledge requirements for software projects

Purpose This paper aims to explore the expertise level required in various kinds of business knowledge such as regulatory, domain, strategic, operation process and, business process to execute globally distributed software projects for development, re-engineering and maintenance projects in the Indian outsourcing software industry. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a questionnaire survey method to collect the expert responses for a knowledge management framework which is suggested in the literature for software development work. The questionnaire survey findings were verified by expert interviews. Findings The research shows that there is a lot of similarity between re-engineering and maintenance projects for different kinds of business knowledge expertise requirements for execution. The development projects require higher expertise in all the business knowledge for execution. Research limitations/implications The research work studies the business knowledge required for the execution of development, re-engineering and maintenance projects in Indian outsourcing software projects. However, the project’s characteristics can vary drastically for a single kind of project. So the study cannot be generalized and instead should be used as a tool for learning. Practical implications The research findings can be used by software project managers to get insight into project planning, which can help the division of work between the onsite, offshore team and individual work allocation. Originality/value The research is novel as there are very few previous attempts to find the business expertise needed to execute various kinds of software projects in the Indian outsourcing industry.

CFDSD: a Communication Framework for Distributed Software Development

Due to geographical and/or temporal dispersion, communication between teams in distributed software projects is a critical factor for success. Notably, distributed teams suffer adverse physical and temporal dispersion effects during an information exchange. To mitigate problems arising from interactions, it is important to understand the communication structure of teams during distributed projects. The objective of this work is to present the Communication Framework for Distributed Software Development. This framework groups a set of distributed projects communication concepts and enables a unified view of all stakeholders’ intercommunications that use many interaction technologies. The goal of this framework is to portray the dynamics of the interaction between distributed teams in a multi-tier structure, and each tier approaches a single function in the intercommunication process. We analyzed all interactions from distributed teams after developing an experimental IT Project, using the content analysis method to validate the Communication Framework for Distributed Software Development. The main contribution of this work is the framework specification, and the investigation, which has the potential to help mapping communication patterns in DSD. Moreover, this framework comprises interfaces for communication assessment and includes intercommunications from automated engineering tools as bots.

Using simulation for understanding and reproducing distributed software development processes in the cloud

Context: Organizations increasingly develop software in a distributed manner. The Cloud provides an environment to create and maintain software-based products and services. Currently, it is unknown which software processes are suited for Cloud-based development and what their effects in specific contexts are.Objective: We aim at better understanding the software process applied to distributed software development using the Cloud as development environment. We further aim at providing an instrument, which helps project managers comparing different solution approaches and to adapt team processes to improve future project activities and outcomes.Method: We provide a simulation model, which helps analyzing different project parameters and their impact on projects performed in the Cloud. To evaluate the simulation model, we conduct different analyses using a Scrumban process and data from a project executed in Finland and Spain. An extra adaptation of the simulation model for Scrum and Kanban was used to evaluate the suitability of the simulation model to cover further process models.Results: A comparison of the real project data with the results obtained from the different simulation runs shows the simulation producing results close to the real data, and we could successfully replicate a distributed software project. Furthermore, we could show that the simulation model is suitable to address further process models.Conclusion: The simulator helps reproducing activities, developers, and events in the project, and it helps analyzing potential tradeoffs, e.g., regarding throughput, total time, project size, team size and work-in-progress limits. Furthermore, the simulation model supports project managers selecting the most suitable planning alternative thus supporting decision-making processes.

ADAPT: A Framework for Agile Distributed Software Development

A growing number of developers are using agile practices in distributed software projects. Researchers have created the ADAPT (Agile Distributed Adaptable Process Toolkit) framework to guide the implementation of agile practices in distributed environments. The Web Extras detail the research methods the authors employed.

Stochastic Performance Analysis of Global Software Development Teams

Measuring productivity in globally distributed projects is crucial to improve team performance. These measures often display information on whether a given project is moving forward or starts to demonstrate undesired behaviors. In this paper we are interested in showing how analytical models could deliver insights for the behavior of specific distributed software collaboration projects. We present a model for distributed projects using stochastic automata networks (SAN) formalism to estimate, for instance, the required level of coordination for specific project configurations. We focus our attention on the level of interaction among project participants and its close relation with team’s productivity. The models are parameterized for different scenarios and solved using numerical methods to obtain exact solutions. We vary the team’s expertise and support levels to measure the impact on the overall project performance. As results, we present our derived productivity index for all scenarios and we state implications found in order to analyze popular preconceptions in GSD area, confirming some, and refusing others. Finally, we foresee ways to extend the models to represent more intricate behaviors and communication patterns that are usually present in globally distributed software projects.

A Flexible Management Approach for Globally Distributed Software Projects

Management of globally distributed software projects is one of the biggest challenges of the IT industry worldwide. Distributed software development involves teams working in different geographic locations and even in different countries. These distributed projects may involve teams from the same organization or have collaborative teams from different organizations that work together on a specific project. The dimension of distribution greatly enhances the complexity of managing these projects in globalized work environments. Therefore, there is a need to explore novel solutions to address this growing challenge. Research and practice have accentuated the need to embrace flexibility in management practices. This can potentially offer novel insights in unraveling the distributed work complexity. This paper is conceptual in nature and its objective is to propose a flexible management approach for globally distributed software projects. It also presents an in-depth review of literature and makes a case for embracing flexibility in management practices to address the challenges of distribution in today’s global work environments.

Management of Possible Roles for Distributed Software Projects Using Layer Architecture

Several members are involved in development and management of the Distributed Software Projects. Each member needs to know the responsibilities of each other for proper management of the activities of such distributed projects to produce coherent outcomes. Distribution middleware software has higher-level distributed programming models whose reusable APIs (application programming interface) and components automate and extend native operating system capabilities. Software management tools like Work break-down structure (WBS), Gantt chart, Critical Path Method, and Critical Chain Method etc. does not fully help the managers to manage the member's responsibilities during the development of distributed applications. The layered architecture can help to do so. This style not only gives the layer level description of the activity involved, it also defines and directs the group of workforce. By listing the groups of workforce, the development team as well as the customer can know the activity and the member involved to work on those specific activities. This layered architecture is much benefited to development team and also to numbers of stakeholder of the large distributed project. The extended new approach of layer pattern with 'Responsibility Index' adds extra value to manage all the members' responsibilities. Managers, stakeholders and others can have an easy management system. The request or complaint from the customer can be passed to appropriate team without much delay. Most importantly this will give facility to collect timely feedback from all levels of customers.

Empirical evidence of factors influencing project context in distributed software projects

This study was carried out to find the context and factors that can affect the productivity of a team of developers and testers in a distributed software project. We interviewed project members in order to understand the relationships between those project context factors and their impact on scheduling risk. Our results suggest that, from a testers site point of view, knowledge expertise and communication overhead are important factors influencing the allocation strategy and the team productivity. Also there is still a lack of empirical evidences to define which factors managers, developers and testers should be aware when setting up and executing a distributed software development project.

Managing knowledge on communication and information flow in global software projects

AbstractCommunication is a key success factor of distributed software projects. Poor communication has been identified as a main obstacle to successful collaboration. Global projects are especially endangered by information gaps between collaborating sites. Different communication styles, technical equipment, and missing awareness of each other can cause severe problems. Knowledge about actual and desired channels, paths, and modes of communication is required for improving communication in a globally distributed project. However, many project participants know little about communication and information flow in their projects. In this contribution, we focus on knowledge about communication and information flow. It is acquired by modelling on‐going and desired flows of information, including documented and non‐documented channels of information flow. We analyzed a distributed software project from the information flow perspective. Based on the findings, we developed specific techniques to improve information flow in distributed software development according to the FLOW Method. In a second distributed project, we evaluated one of the techniques. We found the FLOW mapping technique to be suitable for effectively spreading knowledge about communication and information flow in global software projects.

A Case-based Reasoning System to Support the Global Software Development

In addition to the benefits brought by the use of Distributed Software Development, new challenges linked to its use also emerged. Due to lack of information companies and organizations around the globe, independently, solve these challenges in many different ways, each with their practices, some more some less efficient, where best practices are hardly widespread among DDS community. In this context, this paper aims to present a web system based on Case Based Reasoning and Natural Language Processing to extract information in text form of problems and solutions adopted by distributed software projects and to recommend similar past experiences in order to support the decisions and resolutions of problems arising from new situations in distributed projects. The feasibility proof of the method was made from experimental tests conducted to identify the success of the recommendations of previous valid cases, with a success rate of 90% for the sample used.

Accuracy of aggregate data in distributed project settings

We examine the management of data accuracy in inter-organizational data exchanges using the context of distributed software projects. Organizations typically manage projects by outsourcing portions of the project to partners. Managing a portfolio of such projects requires sharing data regarding the status of work-in-progress residing with the partners and estimates of these projects' completion times. Portfolio managers use these data to assign projects to be outsourced to partners. These data are rarely accurate. Unless these data are filtered, inaccuracies can lead to myopic and expensive sourcing decisions. We develop a model that uses project-status data to identify an optimal assignment of projects to be outsourced. This model permits corruption of project-status data. We use this model to compute the costs of using perfect versus inaccurate project-status data and show that the costs of deviation from optimal are sizable when the inaccuracy in the data is significant. We further propose a filter to correct inaccurate project-status data and generate an estimate of true progress. With this filter, depending on the relative magnitudes of errors, we show that accuracy of project-status data can be improved and the associated economic benefit is significant. We illustrate the improvement in accuracy and associated economic benefit by instantiating the model and the filter. We further elaborate on how the model parameters may be estimated and used in practice.

A Preventive Risk Analysis for Managing Distributed Software Projects based on Deliverable

In a distributed software development environment, software projects are geographically distributed with minimal face-toface interaction between team members. Recent software functions are delegated to popular open source software projects: -examples like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, Android and the Apache OpenOffice Suite, etc. So the managers must know how to perform distributed projects and its team. Most of software risk management is done throughout the whole project from inception to commissioning. The aim of this study is to understand the need for the risk assessment and management based on deliverable for both agile and traditional methods of software development process. In this study, the authors propose a model, where the protective risk analysis can be done based on the deliverables, so that require mitigations can be provided. Mitigation factors can be also based on the seriousness of the deliverable

Analyzing the scalability of coordination requirements of a distributed software project

AbstractCollaborative tools have been proposed to support different domains, including software development. Despite important previous work on the design of collaborative tools, none directly addresses the required scalability of these collaborative tools. As such, the design of these tools is hindered because it does not take into account real-world requirements for handling and presenting information to support collaborative activities. In this paper, we use an approach to compute the coordination requirements of an actor, and by so doing, we are able to identify the required scalability of the collaborative tools to support these actors. The coordination requirements are the likely set of actors that a particular individual might need to coordinate/communicate with. We computed the coordination requirements of software developers involved in a large-scale distributed software development project. Software developers’ coordination requirements were computed in four different time intervals: 1, 7, 15, and 30 days so that we could assess the scalability of collaborative tools in both short and long term software development activities. Our results suggest that, in some cases, the number of coordination requirements of a given actor might be very large, and that current collaborative software development tools do not provide proper support for such values. Furthermore, we observed that coordination requirements often involved members of different teams and from different locations, which increases the importance of having collaborative tools properly designed, given the difficulty of collaborating across organizational and geographical boundaries.

Propinquity in global software engineering: examining perceived distance in globally distributed project teams

SUMMARYIn social psychology, propinquity refers to the physical (objective) or psychological (subjective) proximity between people. In this paper, we explore the psychological dimension of propinquity by examining the phenomenon of feeling distant from geographically distributed people, in the context of distributed software teams. The perceived distance is an important challenge faced by distributed teams, and it is frequently based on factors beyond the physical distance, such as communication and cultural differences. The purpose of this paper is to present a model to assess and make more visible the construct of ‘perceived distance’ among members of global software engineering teams. The model was applied in three real‐world cases to assess its effectiveness in uncovering hidden and useful information during the project lifecycle. The practical experience lived with the quantification of perceived distance gave us good indication that this data can benefit the practice of global software engineering. In most of the projects evaluated, project managers were not expecting the results found. We present the model, details of its applications, analysis of the results, lessons learned and practical implications for the management of distributed software projects and teams. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Factors of stickiness in transfers of know-how between MNC units

The effective sharing of organizational knowledge is particularly relevant for multinational corporations, where firm-specific tacit knowledge (know-how) is considered a source of competitive advantage for subsidiaries participating in a global strategy. To that end, multinational corporations (MNCs) are asking their IT departments to support both the exploitation of existing knowledge and the unit-to-unit transfer of new know-how derived in units from exploration. Nonetheless, new know-how derived from exploratory research, development and experience in one unit can be difficult to transfer to units that can exploit that know-how to commercial ends. The factors that impede the transfer of new know-how have been conceptualized as “factors of stickiness”. In this paper, we present a theoretical model of organizational factors that can cause (or conversely mitigate) stickiness in the flow of new know-how between MNC units. To test the six hypotheses of the model, we used meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) of 31 empirical studies, representing 10,432 cases of new know-how transfer between units. The result of MASEM shows that the factors of receiving units’ potential absorptive capacity and transmission channel in form of social capital that is enacted through its three dimensions (i.e., embedded social ties between units, institutional shared vision of units, and interorganizational trust of units) affect recipient subsidiaries’ capability to exploit new know-how in practice (i.e., realized absorptive capacity), thus effectuating its transfer. Based on our findings, we propose research directions within the context of agile information systems development, distributed software projects, and management of information systems functions in MNCs.

Agile distributed software development: enacting control through media and context

AbstractWhile face‐to‐face interaction is fundamental in agile software development, distributed environments must rely extensively on mediated interactions. Practicing agile principles in distributed environments therefore poses particular control challenges related to balancing fixed vs. evolving quality requirements and people vs. process‐based collaboration. To investigate these challenges, we conducted an in‐depth case study of a successful agile distributed software project with participants from a Russian firm and a Danish firm. Applying Kirsch's elements of control framework, we offer an analysis of how control was enacted through the project context and in the participants' mediated communication. The analysis reveals that formal measurement and evaluation control were persistently enacted through mediated communication. These formal control practices were, however, predominantly carried out in conjunction with informal roles and relationships such as clan‐like control inherent in agile development. Overall, the study demonstrates that, if appropriately applied, communication technologies can significantly support distributed, agile practices by allowing concurrent enactment of both formal and informal controls. The paper discusses these findings as they relate to previous research and concludes with their implications for future research.

Methodological reflections on a field study of a globally distributed software project

Context: We describe the methodology of a field study of a globally distributed software development project in a multinational corporation. The project spanned four sites in the US and one in India, and is a representative example of the complexities and intricacies of global corporate software development. Objective: Our goal is to provide the rationale behind the methodological choices and derive insights to inform the methodology of future studies of global software engineering teams. The paper also aims to provide an illustrative case of a typical geographically distributed corporate software project, through an in-depth description that emerged by applying the methods. Method: We reflect upon the reasons for choosing each of our methods, viz., non-participant observation, site visits, interviews, and an online questionnaire. We then discuss what we learned from the experience of applying the methods. Results: During and after the study, the discussions surrounding our methodological choices yielded important insights. The dynamics of software engineering practice and the geographical distribution of the project impacted factors such as access, costs, and cultural and linguistic diversity, and influenced the choice of methods. Our experience makes a case for methodological breadth and plurality as a means to a broad understanding of a global project. This understanding could then be linked to the specific research questions under consideration. Conclusion: The in-depth contextual description of the project that emerged from our methods highlights the utility of our methodological approach and provides an illustration of the complex nature of these projects. Our systematic reflection also yielded several methodological insights and provides important implications for future empirical studies of global corporate software development. Our experience can serve as a useful resource in methodological choices for research on globally distributed software engineering teams, or collaborative knowledge work in general.