Global Software Development Research Articles

Assessing the impact of real-time machine translation on multilingual meetings in global software projects

Communication in global software development is hindered by language differences in countries with a lack of English speaking professionals. Machine translation is a technology that uses software to translate from one natural language to another. The progress of machine translation systems has been steady in the last decade. As for now, machine translation technology is particularly appealing because it might be used, in the form of cross-language chat services, in countries that are entering into global software projects. However, despite the recent progress of the technology, we still lack a thorough understanding of how real-time machine translation affects communication. In this paper, we present a set of empirical studies with the goal of assessing to what extent real-time machine translation can be used in distributed, multilingual requirements meetings instead of English. Results suggest that, despite far from 100 % accurate, real-time machine translation is not disruptive of the conversation flow and, therefore, is accepted with favor by participants. However, stronger effects can be expected to emerge when language barriers are more critical. Our findings add to the evidence about the recent advances of machine translation technology and provide some guidance to global software engineering practitioners in regarding the losses and gains of using English as a lingua franca in multilingual group communication, as in the case of computer-mediated requirements meetings.

Communication and personality profiles of global software developers

ContextPrior research has established that a small proportion of individuals dominate team communication during global software development. It is not known, however, how these members’ contributions affect their teams’ knowledge diffusion process, or whether their personality profiles are responsible for their dominant presence. ObjectiveWe set out to address this gap through the study of repository artifacts. MethodArtifacts from ten teams were mined from the IBM Rational Jazz repository. We employed social network analysis (SNA) to group practitioners into two clusters, Top Members and Others, based on the numbers of messages they communicated and their engagement in task changes. SNA metrics (density, in-degree and closeness) were then used to study practitioners’ importance in knowledge diffusion. Thereafter, we performed psycholinguistic analysis on practitioners’ messages using linguistic dimensions that had been previously correlated with the Big Five personality profiles. ResultsFor our sample of 146 practitioners we found that Top Members occupied critical roles in knowledge diffusion, and demonstrated more openness to experience than the Others. Additionally, all personality profiles were represented during teamwork, although openness to experience, agreeableness and extroversion were particularly evident. However, no specific personality predicted members’ involvement in knowledge diffusion. ConclusionTask assignment that promotes highly connected team communication networks may mitigate tacit knowledge loss in global software teams. Additionally, while members expressing openness to experience are likely to be particularly driven to perform, this is not entirely responsible for a global team’s success.

An ANFIS approach for evaluation of team-level service climate in GSD projects using Taguchi-genetic learning algorithm

The GSD team-level service climate is one of the key determinants to achieve the outcome of global software development (GSD) projects from the software service outsourcing perspective. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the GSD team-level service climate and GSD project outcome relationship based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) with the genetic learning algorithm. For measuring the team-level service climate, the Hybrid Taguchi-Genetic Learning Algorithm (HTGLA) is adopted in the ANFIS, which is more appropriate to determine the optimal premise and consequent constructs by reducing the root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of service climate criteria. For measuring the GSD team-level service climate, synthesizing the literature reviews and consistent with the earlier studies on IT service climate which is classified into three main criterion: managerial practices (deliver quality of service), global service climate (measure overall perceptions), service leadership (goal setting, work planning, and coordination) which comprises 25 GSD team-level service climate attributes. The experimental results show that the optimal prediction error is obtained by the HTGLA-based ANFIS approach is 3.26%, which outperforms the earlier result that is the optimal prediction errors 4.41% and 5.75% determined, respectively, by ANFIS and statistical methods.

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.

Boundary Spanning in Global Software Development: a Major Indian Vendor case

How does a global company deal with inter-organizational boundary spanning activities? If the company is a vendor from an emerging economy, and the client a Western multinational company in need of major transformations, the answer to this question challenges prior research. This paper builds on a field study of Indian IT vendor managers who are responsible for developing client relations and coordinating complex global development projects. The authors revise a framework of boundary spanning leadership practices to adapt it to an offshore outsourcing context. The empirical investigation highlights how imbalances of power, exacerbated in the case of an Indian vendor and a European client, need to be taken into account. The paper thus contributes with a context sensitive understanding of inter-organizational boundary work. Taking the vendor perspective also leads to problematization of common assumptions on boundary spanning activities regarding their reciprocity, desirability and stability and thereby gen...

FreGsd: A Framework for Global Software Requirement Engineering

Software development nowadays is more and more using global ways of development instead of normal development environment where development occurs in one location. This paper is aimed to propose a requirement engineering framework to support Global Software Development environment with regards to all requirement engineering activities from elicitation to finally managing requirement change. Global software environment is more and more gaining better reputation in software development with better quality is resulting from developing in this environment yet with lower cost. However, failure rate developing in this environment is high due to inappropriate requirement development and management. This paper will add to the software engineering development environments discipline and many developers in GSD will benefit from it.

How software development competences change in global settings-an explorative study

Global software development GSD holds various challenges and problems for team members. When confronted with a contextual change in their working environment, individuals have to adapt to the new situation. This includes the adaptation of working styles, behaviors, and methods. Additionally, new challenges, especially those based on the virtual work and cultural background of team members, have to be addressed. By conducting explorative expert interviews, we identified challenges and potential solutions for individuals when encountering contextual change with a focus on competences. We identified that the lack of competences was seen as a major influence factor for a variety of common challenges to GSD. The identification of underlying factors of challenges could allow for focused development of interventions to overcome these challenges. Furthermore, we identified factors influencing the adaptation of competences to the given context and provided insight into the process of competences adaptation. This is the basis for the future development of a set of internationalized GSD competences. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Soft competency requirements in requirements engineering, software design, implementation, and testing

Global software development changes the requirements in terms of soft competency and increases the complexity of social interaction by including intercultural aspects. While soft competency is often seen as crucial for the success of global software development projects, the concrete competence requirements remain unknown. Internationalization competency represents one of the first attempts to structure and describe the soft competence requirements for global software developers. Based on the diversity of tasks, competence requirements will differ among the various phases of software development. By conducting a survey on the importance of internationalization competences for the different phases of global software development, we identified differences in terms of competence importance and requirements in the phases. “Adaptability” (of one's working style) and “Cultural Awareness” were the main differences. “Cultural Awareness” distinguishes requirements engineering and software design from testing and implementation while “Adaptability” distinguishes implementation and software design from requirements engineering and testing.

A combined fuzzy DEMATEL and fuzzy TOPSIS approach for evaluating GSD project outcome factors

The theoretical basis for studying the phenomenon of Global Software Development (GSD) draws upon one of the key research streams, that is, the Organizational Behavior (OB) research. The focus of this study has led to two research problems: partnership quality and service climate aspects are addressed which have given an insight into the OB research on GSD teams. Moreover, this study classifies results from the partnership quality and service climate aspects into one integrated framework, which covers 18 attributes to explore the GSD outcome factors perceived by GSD teams in OB research phenomenon. To evaluate partnership quality and team service climate aspects with reference to the GSD project outcome, we have integrated the fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory Model (DEMATEL) and the Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach, which is more appropriate to find the significance of criteria. The empirical application of this hybrid approach for evaluating GSD project outcome factors has been tested in Indian software organizations. Consequently, the results of this study provide a vivid picture and facilitate the organization to reveal the importance of OB research on GSD teams.

Using extended Axiomatic Design theory to reduce complexities in Global Software Development projects

Global Software Development (GSD) projects could be best understood as intrinsically complex adaptive living systems: they cannot purely be considered as ‘designed systems’, as deliberate design/control episodes and processes (using ‘software engineering’ models) are intermixed with emergent change episodes and processes (that may perhaps be explained by models). Therefore to understand GSD projects as complex systems we need to combine the state-of-the-art of GSD research, as addressed in the software engineering discipline, with results of other disciplines that study complexity (e.g. Enterprise Architecture, Complexity and Information Theory, Axiomatic Design theory). In this paper we study the complexity of GSD projects and propose an upper bound estimation of Kolmogorov complexity (KC) to estimate the information content (as a complexity measure) of project plans. We demonstrate using two hypothetical examples how good and bad project plans compare with respect to complexity, and propose the application of extended Axiomatic Design (AD) theory to reduce the complexity of GSD projects in the project planning stage, as well as to keep this complexity as low as possible during the project execution stage.

Secured Cloud Support for Global Software Requirement Risk Management

This paper presents core problem solution to security of Global Software Development Requirement Information. Currently the major issue deals with hacking of sensitive client information which may lead to major financial as well as social loss. To avoid this system provides cloud security by encryption of data as well as deployment of tool over the cloud will provide significant security to whole global content management system. The core findings are presented in terms of how hacker hacks such systems and what counter steps need to follow. Our algorithmic development provide random information storage at various cloud nodes to secure our client requirement data files.

Does Distance Still Matter? Revisiting the CSCW Fundamentals on Distributed Collaboration

Does distance still matter? Reporting on a comparative analysis of four ethnographic studies of global software development, this article analyzes the fundamental aspects of distance as depicted in the famous paper “Distance Matters.” The results suggest that, although while common ground, collaboration readiness, and organizational management are still important aspects for distributed collaboration, the arguments concerning coupling of work and collaboration technology readiness need to be refined. We argue that in working remotely, closely coupled work tasks encourage remote workers to spend the extra effort required in articulation of work to make the collaboration function. Also we find that people in distributed software development have already made collaborative technologies part of their work, and individuals are comfortable with them; thus, collaboration technology readiness takes a different shape in this setting.

The effect of onsite-offshore work division on project cost, schedule, and quality for re-engineering projects in Indian outsourcing software industry

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to make an attempt to find good values of onsite–offshore team strength; number of hours of communication between business users and onsite team and between onsite and offshore team to reduce cost and improve schedule for re-engineering projects in global software development environment. Design/methodology/approach – The system dynamics technique is used for simulation model construction and policy run experimentation. The experts from Indian software outsourcing industry were consulted for model construction, validation and analysis of policy run results in both co-located and distributed software development environment. Findings – The study results show that there is a drop in the overall team productivity in outsourcing environment by considering the offshore options. But the project cost can be reduced by employing the offshore team for coding and testing work only with minimal training for imparting business knowledge. The research results show that there is a potential to save project cost by being flexible in project schedule. Research limitations/implications – The study found that there could be substantial cost saving for re-engineering projects with a loss of project schedule when an appropriate onsite–offshore combination is used. The quality and productivity drop, however, were rather small for such combinations. The cost savings are high when re-engineering work is sent to offshore location entirely after completion of requirement analysis work at onsite location and providing training to offshore team in business knowledge The research findings show that there is potential to make large cost savings by being flexible in project schedule for re-engineering projects. Practical implications – The software project manager can use the model results to divide the software team between onsite and offshore location during various phases of software development in distributed environment. Originality/value – The study is novel as there is little attempt at finding the team distribution between onsite and offshore location in global software development environment.

The Proposed GSD Model to Solve Coordination and Communication Problems

Global Software Development (GSD) is the most recent and major trend in software engineering domain. It provides many benefits but also faces various challenges in control, communication and coordination due to socio-cultural, geographical and temporal distance. Scrum is increasingly being applied in GSD as it supports teamwork between developers and customers. Scrum method offers a distinctive feature to mitigate the effects of socio-cultural and geographical but not temporal distance on coordination in GSD projects. This paper explains how Scrum helps to mitigate the effects of temporal distance that includes increased coordination costs in GSD projects.

Scrum Practices and Global Software Development

Global software development (GSD) is one of the emerging areas of software engineering. Stakeholders are distributed located that brings into several challenges to coordinate and collaborate effectively. Scrum is one the widely practiced agile methodologies. Majority of the software development companies showed a great interest from last few years to apply Scrum methodology in distributed development to solve the coordination and communication problems. Although Scrum contains good features and strengths but still there are improvement possibilities to solve the problems of coordination and collaboration in GSD. Majority of software development companies face the problems of coordination and communication in GSD projects. This paper proposes a novel solution to mitigate the coordination and communication challenges of GSD projects. The survey is used as a research methodology to evaluate the proposed solution. The proposed solution is supported by 62.24%. We anticipate that the proposed solution will help the software development companies to mitigate the coordination and communication challenges of GSD projects.

Software Development Outsourcing: Challenges and Opportunities in Nigeria

In recent years, several emergent regions have become software development sourcing countries. This article investigates the possibilities of sub-Saharan Africa as a sourcing destination in the software field. To find out the reasons why sub-Saharan Africa countries, in general, and Nigeria, in particular, are not considered a destination for global software development projects, the authors interviewed a set of professionals from Europe and Africa. Results indicate that there are many disadvantages and difficulties impeding Nigeria from becoming a preferred sourcing destination, mainly the absence of a strong software industry and the concerns about legislative, fiscal, and commercial premises. On the other hand, it is observed that there are also relevant added values and competitive advantages in Nigeria (English-speaking country, same time zone, and cost); therefore, it can become a potential target for software development outsourcing in the medium and long terms.

An experience-based framework for evaluating alignment of software quality goals

Efficient quality management of software projects requires knowledge of how various groups of stakeholders involved in software development prioritize the product and project goals. Agreements or disagreements among members of a team may originate from inherent groupings, depending on various professional or other characteristics. These agreements are not easily detected by conventional practices (discussions, meetings, etc.) since the natural language expressions are often obscuring, subjective, and prone to misunderstandings. It is therefore essential to have objective tools that can measure the alignment among the members of a team; especially critical for the software development is the degree of alignment with respect to the prioritization goals of the software product. The paper proposes an experience-based framework of statistical and graphical techniques for the systematic study of prioritization alignment, such as hierarchical cluster analysis, analysis of cluster composition, correlation analysis, and closest agreement-directed graph. This framework can provide a thorough and global picture of a team’s prioritization perspective and can potentially aid managerial decisions regarding team composition and leadership. The framework is applied and illustrated in a study related to global software development where 65 individuals in different roles, geographic locations and professional relationships with a company, prioritize 24 goals from individual perception of the actual situation and for an ideal situation.

English

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 what is called Global Software Development (GSD), as observed in our 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.

Handover of managerial responsibilities in global software development: a case study of source code evolution and quality

Studies report on the negative effect on quality in global software development (GSD) due to communication and coordination-related challenges. However, empirical studies reporting on the magnitude of the effect are scarce. This paper presents findings from an embedded explanatory case study on the change in quality over time, across multiple releases, for products that were developed in a GSD setting. The GSD setting involved periods of distributed development between geographically dispersed sites as well as a handover of project management responsibilities between the involved sites. Investigations were performed on two medium-sized products from a company that is part of a large multinational corporation. Quality is investigated quantitatively using defect data and measures that quantify two source code properties, size and complexity. Observations were triangulated with subjective views from company representatives. There were no observable indications that the distribution of work or handover of project management responsibilities had an impact on quality on both products. Among the product-, process- and people-related success factors, we identified well-designed product architectures, early handover planning and support from the sending site to the receiving site after the handover and skilled employees at the involved sites. Overall, these results can be useful input for decision-makers who are considering distributing development work between globally dispersed sites or handing over project management responsibilities from one site to another. Moreover, our study shows that analyzing the evolution of size and complexity properties of a product’s source code can provide valuable information to support decision-making during similar projects. Finally, the strategy used by the company to relocate responsibilities can also be considered as an alternative for software transfers, which have been linked with a decline in efficiency, productivity and quality.

Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Agile software development (ASD) refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. The two most widely used methodologies based on the agile philosophy are scrum and extreme programming. Whichever methodology is considered, agile teams usually consist of few members and are collocated under the same roof. However, nowadays, agile practices for distributed development are gaining much momentum. The main reasons behind such practice are cheaper skilled labour, minimizing production cost, reducing time to market and increasing the quality and performance of projects. Along with the benefits obtained through globally distributed development, there are, however, many difficulties faced by various organisations. These problems are caused mostly due to distance, time and cultural differences. To meet up with the level of complexity of projects, ASD also has to keep up with many challenges, especially in cases of distributed teams. Four major challenges have been identified. First, the introduction of global software development entails a number of difficulties, especially related to knowledge sharing. For instance, lack of transparency is frequently observed within such teams, whereby a team member is totally unaware of the activities of his/her colleagues. Second, the unavailability of team members due to time zone differences adds up to the list of problems confronted by distributed teams. Third, there can be misunderstanding amongst the team member due to communication problems, especially in cases where the mother language of the team members is different. Fourth, a common issue faced by distributed teams is the loss of knowledge when an employee resigns from his/her post. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the main problems outlined above, what has been proposed is Knowledge4Scrum, a novel knowledge management tool for agile distributed teams. Knowledge4Scrum will act as a global repository for knowledge sharing in Scrum distributed teams with the possibility of creating new knowledge through data mining techniques. Valid past projects data have been collected to train and test the data mining models. The research also investigates the suitability of knowledge management in Scrum distributed teams to address the various challenges addressed above. Findings – Knowledge4Scrum supports the four knowledge management processes, namely, knowledge creation/acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application. It has been found that the aforementioned tool satisfactorily addressed issues of distance, time and cultural differences that crop-up in distributed development teams. Data mining has been the main aspect for the knowledge creation and application processes, whereby new knowledge has been determined by examining and extracting patterns from existing data found in the repository. Originality/value – A major feature of the Knowledge4Scrum tool lies in the knowledge creation and application section, where a number of data mining techniques have been utilised to identify trends and patterns in past data collected. When compared to the COnstructive COst MOdel to estimate project duration, Knowledge4Scrum gives more than satisfactory results. Such functionalities will actually help managers for future project planning and in decision-making.