Global Software Development Challenges 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.

AGILE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE INGLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT:SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE MAPPING

In recent years, software development companies started to adopt Global Software Development (GSD) toexplore the benefits of this approach, mainly cost reduction. However, the GSD environment also brings more complexity and challenges. Some challenges are related to communication aspects like cultural differences, time zone, and language. This paper is the first step in an extensive study to understand if the software architecture can ease communication in GSD environments. We conducted a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to catalog relevant studies about software architecture and GSD teams and identify potential practices for use in the software industry. This paper’s findings contribute to the GSD body of knowledge by exploring the impact of software architecture strategy on the GSD environment. It presents hypotheses regarding the relationship between software architecture and GSD challenges, which will guide future research.

Software development process evolution and paradigm shift - a case study of Malaysian companies

Due to the consequences of global software development (GSD), the traditional approaches of software development evolved into lightweight agile methods. The agile methods got overwhelming response from software development companies due to their obvious support to GSD. In this regard, limited research work has been presented on software process evolution and process paradigm shift in context of GSD. Most of the work presented on GSD mainly focus on the companies in Europe, America, Australia and other western countries. Existing research work highlight the standard benefits and challenges of GSD but do not investigate its effect on software development processes and associated reasons causing the affect particularly in Malaysian software development companies. The research work presented in this paper addresses this issue and investigates the effects of GSD on software processes, software process evolution and paradigm shift and finds the current software processes being used in Malaysian companies. Also, it further determines the GSD factors and reasons behind the change and selection of a software development process. GSD factors affecting the software processes have been termed as challenges. Structured interviews have been conducted to collect qualitative data from industry professionals involved in GSD. General inductive approach has been used for qualitative data analysis and findings. The results show that after GSD, Malaysian companies are mostly following agile methods. The traditional and ad-hoc approaches used before GSD have been replaced by the lightweight agile methodologies. Few of the companies are still following ad-hoc approaches mainly due to size of the project and company as most of the Malaysian companies are small and medium size. The research is significant that it provides clear insight into software process paradigm in Malaysian companies. The outcome of the research provides foundations for the standardization of software processes, process improvement, selection and quality enhancement approaches in Malaysian companies.

Implicit bias and negative stereotyping in global software development and why it is time to move on!

AbstractPrior research documents how the use of national cultural differences when used as an argument for failed collaboration is problematic and makes information technology (IT) companies blind to the challenges in global software development (GSD). Nevertheless, we still witness how issues in GSD work are kept explained, applied, and predicted through generic descriptions of national cultural behavior. Based on two ethnographic studies conducted within two large Danish IT companies, we extend prior work on implicit bias. The paper presents empirical examples on the widespread practice of using racist and stereotypical rhetoric in GSD, which initially motivated us to look for alternative strategies for analyzing the actual and locally situated collaboration‐related problems within organizations involved in GSD. Our contributions are threefold: (1) We show how the widespread practice of using negative stereotypical rhetoric is weaved into the fabric of GSD engagements; (2) we present the empirical results of attending to implicit bias as an approach to explore and combat pervasive practices that deploy static cultural narratives and stereotypes in GSD; and (3) we propose three areas in GSD that software organizations should investigate to identify and address the implicit biases that potentially challenge or shatter their distributed collaborative work.

Requirement Engineering Challenges in Global Software Development: Empirical Study

Requirement Engineering Challenges in Global Software Development: Empirical Study

Proposing total quality management as a buffer between global software development challenges and project success

PurposeThis study aims to empirically investigate the relationship between different global software development (GSD) challenges (management, process, social, technical and environmental challenges) and software project success. Further, the study examines the moderating role of total quality management (TQM) between the relationship of GSD challenges and success of software projects.Design/methodology/approachUsing two field studies, the authors collected data form software developers working in globally distributed teams. In study 1 (n = 194), relationship of different dimensions of GSD challenges (management, process, social, technical and environmental challenges) and project success was examined. In study 2 (n = 138), moderating role of TQM was examined on the relationship of GSD challenges and project success.FindingsThe results of study 1 indicate that there is a negative relationship between all dimensions of GSD challenges and project success. Findings of study 2 confirmed that TQM practices moderate the negative relationship between GSD challenges and project success.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study provide guidelines to the project managers of software industry to mitigate GSD challenges using TQM practices.Originality/valueStudy adds in the literature of TQM, GSD challenges and project success by (1) empirically investigating the relationship between different GSD challenges and software project success and (2) by examining the moderating role of TQM practices on relationship of GSD challenges and project success in global software development industry.

Analytic hierarchy process‐based prioritization framework for vendor's reliability challenges in global software development

AbstractThe concept of global software development was adopted by software organizations for the purpose of delivering quality software products at a reduced cost. Software reliability became one of the eminent challenges in the global software development. The main objective of this research paper is to develop a classification of the challenging factors in the global software development process faced by vendor organizations. The classification of the challenges depends on the data gathered through systematic literature review and implementation of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A total of 18 challenges were explored through systematic literature review and mapped into five categories, that is, capability, reliance, delivery, management, and distinction. The explored issues played a major role for assisting the researcher and designer for mitigating the challenges during “AHP based prioritization framework for Vendor's Reliability challenges in Global Software Development”. Taking the AHP approach, we tried to fill this research gap by exploring and prioritizing the challenges that could negatively impact the vendor reliability of a specific organization. The classification of the explored challenges provided a framework that was used to deal with the issues associated with software reliability in the global software environment, which provided the vital role for the success of software organizations.

Requirement change management challenges in GSD: An analytical hierarchy process approach

AbstractMajority 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.

Requirements Change Management Challenges of Global Software Development: An Empirical Investigation

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.

Organization Type and Size Based Identification of Requirements Change Management Challenges in Global Software Development

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.

Framework for Task Allocation in Global Software Development

The Global Software Development (GSD) promises high-quality software at low cost. It enables round-the-clock development to achieve maximum production in a short period by utilizing expertise around the globe. GSD is only possible if tasks are effectively distributed among sites to ensure smooth development. Therefore, one of the key challenges of GSD is designing a task allocation (TA) strategy. The main objective of the present research is to develop a framework that takes into account important factors, while allocating tasks to distributed sites involved in GSD. The current allocation in plan-based software development is done on ad-hoc basis and does not follow any systematic approach or framework. The framework facilitates decision-makers in allocation of tasks in a manner that controls delay and re-allocation. The study uses a mixed method approach, where the data used to create the framework is acquired via an industrial survey (58 participants) and interviews (10 participants) with GSD practitioners. The developed task allocation framework is validated with the help of an online focus group with participants (7 participants) from around the globe. The ability of the framework to be applicable in real-world scenarios is assessed from the feedback of industry practitioners. They have highlighted the usefulness of the framework to both, practitioners involved in task allocation decision as well as researchers working in the area. The automation and validation of the framework in real-world GSD scenarios is part of future work of this research.

Evaluating GSD-Aware

Global Software Development (GSD) is currently a strong industry trend. This means that if computer science engineers are to be trained to deal with this model, it is very important to include the topic in software engineering courses, attempting to ensure that students learn about GSD and become familiar with its advantages and challenges. However, software engineering courses do not always consider including it in their curricula. It must also be recognized that it is difficult to find a suitable method to teach/develop the different skills needed for GSD. There is often a lot of content and not a great deal of time available to teach it. In this article, we propose the use of a serious game called GSD-Aware, with which students can “suffer” some of the typical challenges of GSD by interacting with avatars and by using several means of communication to solve a number of problems posed. The article focuses on the description of the game and on the empirical study conducted to analyze whether GSD-Aware helps students to be conscious of GSD challenges. It was discovered that after 50 minutes playing the game, the students were aware of the greater influence that the following factors can have: lack of coordination, lack of trust, cultural differences, lack of face-to-face and informal communication, time difference, and lack of team spirit. In their final analysis, students agreed that the serious game scenarios helped them to understand what GSD is and to grasp the importance of some GSD challenges.

An Empirical Study to Investigate the Impact of Communication Issues in GSD in Pakistan’s IT Industry

Global software development (GSD) practice has been increasingly emerging in the recent few decades in the field of business and software industry. On the one hand, many software development organizations get the benefits of GSD, including but not limited to reduced cost, cheap labor, round the clock working and skilled professionals. On the other hand, these organizations have to face several challenges because of GSD. These challenges pose serious threats to the stability of the GSD projects. Communication between distributed team members is one of the most crucial challenges in GSD. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the communication risk in GSD and also evaluate the impact of these communication risks in GSD environment. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been performed to identify all the communication-related issues in GSD. After that, a conceptual framework has been proposed for evaluating the impact of those issues on communication risk in GSD. An empirical evaluation has been performed on data collected from the software organizations of Pakistan working in GSD based environment. The finding of our study demonstrates that geographical distance, socio- temporal distance, socio-culture distance, team member's attitude, team issues, organizational & architectural issue and customer issue have a significant direct impact on communication risk in GSD. The study also shows that there is a significant correlation between findings of SLR and empirical investigation (r = 0.460, P = 0.005). Further, we believe that the results of our research can help to tackle the issues related to communication in GSD. Therefore, it will help to improve the performance of the development activities of GSD organizations.

Towards the Guidelines for Requirements Change Management in Global Software Development: Client-Vendor Perspective

Currently, being deployed by organizations to develop high-quality software at a low cost, global software development (GSD) faces many challenges that make development activities more complex. These GSD challenges are mainly concerned with requirements to change management (RCM). RCM plays a key role in the successful execution of software projects. The objective of this paper is to identify the best practices of the RCM process by adopting a systematic literature review (SLR) and validate them using questionnaire survey with industry experts. A total of 46 best practices were identified through SLR and validated with industry experts. We have further classified the identified practices in the domain of client and vendor GSD organizations with the aim to provide a clear understanding of the RCM best practices in the context of both types of GSD organizations (client, vendor). Moreover, we have conducted a comparison analysis between SLR and questionnaire survey data and found a moderate positive correlation in the ranks of both data sets (rs = 0.522, p=0.003). In addition, the criticality of the identified best practices was assessed using the criteria of a practice having frequency ≥50%. The findings of this paper provide a framework that could help the GSD organizations to address the problems related to RCM in GSD environment.

Geographical Distance and Communication Challenges in Global Software Development: A Review

Due to innumerous advantages the Global software engineering is trending now a days in software development industry. Basic drivers for this trend are flexibility, faster development and expected cost saving. Software development has moved from traditional development to the global software development (GSD). Global software development is very important and ordinary practice in the software industry. In GSD, the developers are distributed across different sites and different countries, and lots of problems arise due to the physical social and cultural barriers. Global Software development is facing a number of challenges including Geographical distance, Communication and collaboration, time, culture, trust, tasks distribution, requirements gathering and collaboration. In this paper, authors conducted a detailed study on geographical distances and communication challenges in GSD, their inter dependencies, and also the proposed solutions and guidelines to address these challenges that are very critical in the success of GSD projects. Also in this paper a detailed literature review is provided, combined results are summarized and on the basis of these studies, a comparative study is made. This research will be helpful for other researchers to draw new strategies to tackle these challenges.

Taxonomy of Factors Causing Integration Failure during Global Software Development

Controlling integration failure is one of the major challenges in global software development (GSD) that remains hidden during the development phase and surfaces during the system integration. The integration failures occur as a result of incompatibilities and integration complexities that subsequently lead to delays, extra cost, affect the overall quality, and can even throw the entire GSD project into chaos. A very good understanding of integration failures may help to overcome the integration challenges. The objective of this paper is to explore comprehensively the integration failure factors. This paper thoroughly reviews the available literature. Moreover, the authors have conducted an industrial survey to more closely explore the integration failure factors. This paper largely contributes by devising a detailed taxonomy of 40 integration failure factors. The classification allows to better understand the relationships between the various factors and helps in creating a holistic solution to deal with integration problems in the context of GSD.

The Use of Kanban to Alleviate Collaboration and Communication Challenges of Global Software Development

Aim/Purpose: This paper aims to describe how various Kanban elements can help alleviate two prominent types of challenges, communication and collaboration in Global Software Development (GSD). Background: Iterative and Lean development methodologies like Kanban have gained significance in the software development industry, both in the co-located and globally distributed contexts. However, little is known on how such methodologies can help mitigate various challenges in that occur in a globally distributed software development context. Methodology: The study was conducted using a single-case study based on a general inductive approach to analysis and theory development. Through the literature review, collaboration and communication challenges that GSD teams face were identified. Data collected through semi-structured interviews was then inductively analyzed to describe how the case-study teams employed various Kanban elements to mitigate communication and collaboration challenges they face during GSD. Findings: The study found that some Kanban elements, when properly employed, can help alleviate collaboration and communication challenges that occur within GSD teams. These relate to Inclusion Criteria, Reverse Items, Kanban Board, Policies, Avatars, and Backlog. Contribution: The paper contributes to knowledge by proposing two simple concept maps that detail the specific types of communication and collaboration challenges which can be alleviated by the aforementioned Kanban elements in GSD. Recommendations for Practitioners: This paper is relevant to GSD teams who are seeking ways to enhance their team collaboration and communication as these are the most important elements that contribute to GSD project success. It is recommended that relevant Kanban elements be used to that effect, depending on the challenges that they aim to alleviate. Future Research: Future research can investigate the same research questions (or similar ones) using a quantitative approach.

Global software development: an exploratory study of challenges of globalization, HRM practices and process improvement

The globalization of software development industry continues to experience a significant growth. The increased trend of globalization brings new challenges, increases the scope of the core functions of human resource management and impacts the dynamics of process improvement. The aim of this study is to explore the challenges of globalization and indicators of process improvement in distributed teams’ environment. This study also explores the impact of HRM practices on challenges of global software development, and, the impact of HRM practices and challenges of global software development on process improvement. The exploratory mixed method design is adapted as research methodology for this study. In this multi-method approach, study is completed in two phases. In first phase, qualitative data is collected, and analyzed to explore the study variables and their relationships in global software development environment. In second phase, quantitative data is collected, and analyzed to validate the findings of first phase. The findings of this study suggest that the challenges of global software development negatively impact the process improvement; but, effective HRM practices help to minimize the negative impact of challenges and positively impacts the process improvement in global software development environment.

Cloud Computing for Global Software Development

The cloud computing paradigm offers an innovative and promising vision concerning Information and Communications Technology. Actually, it provides the possibility of improving IT systems management and is changing the way in which hardware and software are designed and purchased. This paper introduces challenges in Global Software Development (GSD) and application of cloud computing platforms as a solution to some problems. Even though cloud computing provides compelling benefits and cost-effective options for GSD, new risks and difficulties must be taken into account. Thus, the paper presents a study about the risk issues involved in cloud computing. It highlights the different types of risks and how their existence can affect GSD. It also proposes a new risk management process model. The risk model employs new processes for risk analysis and assessment. Its aim is to analyse cloud risks quantitatively and, consequently, prioritise them according to their impact on different GSD objectives.

Applying Q-methodology to analyse the success factors in GSD

ContextThe context of this paper is Global Software Development (GSD) which is a current trend concerning the development of software in a distributed manner throughout different countries. This paradigm has several advantages, but unfortunately there are a number of challenges that hinder projects’ successful development. ObjectiveThe main goal of this paper is to discover which factors affect the success of GSD projects and how these are ranked by researchers and practitioners. MethodThis paper analyses the relevant success factors reported in literature. These were collected by conducting a literature review, as a result of which 39 GSD success factors were selected. Q-methodology was then followed to conduct a survey from which the opinions of 21 experts in GSD were collected. ResultsThe data indicated that the best ranked GSD success factors are staff motivation, skilled human resources and the identification of roles and responsibilities. The lowest scores were, surprisingly, language barriers, time zone differences between sites, cultural differences and geographical distance which, to date, have frequently been considered by researchers as the most influential factors in GSD. This study additionally shows the results according to the different points of view of the respondents involved and the context of the projects. ConclusionThis study indicates that there are different points of view as regards which issues are most important to success when setting up a GSD project. For instance, some experts prefer a knowledge focus, while others prefer a project management approach in which the most important issues are those related to management (risks, coordination) and so on.The results obtained have also shown that the challenges of GSD are changing, since the critical issues were initially related to the various types of distances (geographical, temporal, socio-cultural, language). However, there is now a greater concern for the team members’ features and skills.