Enabling Process Knowing in Global Software Engineering

One of key challenges of Global Software Engineering (GSE) is to help geographically distributed team members to gain a common understanding of the processes. Lack of process knowing results in ambiguity in responsibilities, roles, and assigned tasks and the processes to be followed by different sites. This problem is called “process distance.” There can be several types of process knowledge such as knowledge about workflows, deliverables, team structures, and responsibilities of members. Several researchers have reported that lack of process knowing leads to difficulties in effective coordination, communication, and cooperation. Our recently published study explores an organisation’s challenges of process knowing and strategies to address those challenges. We have empirically studied two small-to-medium sized organisations involved in GSE. The paper reports the findings to help understand how to enable process knowing in a distributed software development teams. The findings are expected to provide useful insights for enabling process knowing to address the problems caused by process knowledge distance and stimulate GSD researchers to explore different aspects of the reported problems and solutions associated with process knowledge distance in GSD.