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Global Software Engineering (GSE)

Global Software Engineering paradigm will have prominence on this blog.

The Role of Site Visits in Software Engineering Teams

A large number of Software Engineering teams are virtual, which are characterised by various types of distances such geographical, culture, temporal, and knowledge. Such distances can cause a number of small and big challenges that lead sub-optimal development teams or event project failures. Software engineering researchers and practitioners have been researching and debating the cost and benefits of site visits for enabling software development teams to spend time together in order to get to know each other professionally and personally. It is argued that such visits result in establishing and growing trust that is important for successful teams. However, software development managers always find it hard to make a strong enough case for investing such visits. We have carried out a longitudinal case study focused on the socio-ethnical dynamics and potential benefits of site visits in terms of enhanced trust and cooperation among team members who came from entirely different regions, culture, region, and socio-economic background. Our study has found very useful insights for software development managers and researchers. We are sharing the details of our study through the pre-print copy of our paper, whose abstract is provided here.

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Knowledge Sharing in Globally Distributed Teams

Globally distributed software engineering has become a norm of getting software developed. Whilst there are several potential benefits of getting software teams working around the clock while being located around the World – so-called follow the sun strategy -, there are several challenges in making such teams successfully work together. Communication, coordination, and collaboration are some of the key areas of challenges of global software development – the challenges in these areas either result from or lead to challenges of sharing knowledge – contextual, technical, personal.  Software engineering researchers and practitioners always seem to be interested in this area as the challenges of knowledge sharing usually lead to project failure and teaming problems.  We are recently published an extensive literature review on knowledge sharing challenges and solutions in global software development. Here is the pre-print copy of our paper, whose abstract is provided below for the interested readers.

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Keynote Talk on Knowledge Sharing & Global Software Development

Knowledge sharing is critical for successful software development projects – Software Engineering community has been investing huge amount of efforts in supporting and promoting knowledge sharing over the last many years with mixed outcomes. Knowledge sharing for gaining common understanding is considered a central concern when software development work crosses geographical, cultural, or organizational boundaries. One of our key research topic is knowledge sharing in Globally Distributed teams. Recently I was invited to give a keynote talk at the XIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality (SBQS 2014) to be held in August in Brazil. Here are TalkinBrazil-05August2014 (19 MB size). I spoke about the knowledge sharing challenges and solutions . Read More »Keynote Talk on Knowledge Sharing & Global Software Development

GSE: Identifying Challenges is Important and Providing Solutions is Even Better

Eventually we have managed to finalised the special section of the best papers published in the International Conference on Global Software Engineering, 2011 (ICGSE 2011) that was organised in Helsinki, Finland. The special section will be published in the January 2014 edition of the Information and Software Technology Journal. Christian and I decided to write an extended introduction to the special section as we wanted to share our views about the research and practice of Global Software Engineering (GSE). One view about the GSE research and practice that we share has been reflected in the title of the introduction to the special section: “Global Software Engineering: Identifying Challenges is Important and Providing Solutions is Even Better.“ Read More »GSE: Identifying Challenges is Important and Providing Solutions is Even Better

Extended Team Model in GSD and Structures

We have been researching the theoretical concepts and practical implementation of Extended Team Model in Global Software Development (GSD) arrangements. This research has been motivated by the increasing popularity of developing software involving cross-organizational teams that are characterised by all sorts of distances (e.g., geographical, cultural, temporal, and knowledge). While there is plenty of literature on different models of GSD (e.g., outsourcing and distributed development centres), there is little known about the structures (work, social, and communication) that may exist in ETM and what affordances those structures provide to support collaboration and coordination. Our research in this area has produced some initial findings that have revealed that whilst the current structures in the studied team help deal with different GSD challenges, these structures appear to have certain challenges inherent in them and the affordances they provide. Based on these findings, our extensive observations from GSD projects in different settings, and structured review of the published literature, we have made a few recommendations for improving the current structures to deal with the observed challenges. The findings from the first phase of data analysis  have been reported in a paper that was presented in the 8th International Conference on Global Software Engineering by Mansooreh Zahedi. The slides from her presentation provide some glimpses of different aspects of our study. Read More »Extended Team Model in GSD and Structures