Lero© 2010

Software Quality & Process Improvement

Dr. Ita RichardsonLero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centreand Department of Computer Science & Information SystemsUniversity of Limerick

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LECTURE 4:GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

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Implementing Global Software Development

Casey, 2007

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What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

There is no one model for Global Software Development

GSD - Problems

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COLLABORATION MODELS (Šmite, 2007)

19 MODELS OUT OF 38 SURVEYED PROJECTS

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COLLABORATION MODELS (Šmite, 2007)

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What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

There are many factors at play in Global Software Development –

Many of which are not software development / engineering / process factors

GSD - Problems

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

Factors in GSD

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Culture Fear

Project Management

What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

Defined Roles and Responsibilities Skills Management Effective PartitioningTechnical Support Reporting requirement Process ManagementTeam SelectionVisibility CoordinationTools True Cost Risk

Communication

Factors in GSD

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Project Planning Information flows (Siemens Global Studio Project – 2005/2006)

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

Fear

Motivation

Trust

Factors in GSD

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

GSD Factors interact

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

Fear of losing jobs prevents good communication between teams

GSD Factors interact

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

How does the project manager ensure that their requirements are met?

GSD Factors interact

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Effective GlobalSoftware Development

Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

GSD Factors interact

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Are there strategies we can use to support effective Global Software

Development?

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GSD Implementation Model (Casey & Richardson, 2009)

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Global Teaming (Richardson et al., 2009)

• SG1: Define Global Project Management– SP1.1 Global Task Management – SP 1.2 Knowledge and Skills – SP 1.3 Global Project Management

• SG2: Define Management between Locations– SP 2.1 Operating procedures– SP 2.2 Collaboration between locations

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SP 1.3 Global Project Management

• Identify Global Software Project Management Tasks– Plan, facilitate, implement, monitor global communication

& coordination related activities– Effective policies and procedures

• Assign Tasks to appropriate team members– Effective partitioning and allocation of work

• Ensure awareness of cultural profiles by project managers– Religion, gender, power distance– Corporate vs national cultural norms

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SP 1.3 Global Project Management

• Establish cooperation and coordination procedures between locations– Tools, processes, technology– Motivation to use tools

• Establish reporting procedures between locations– Implement formal reporting– Requests and instructions

• Establish a risk management strategy– Understand staff and their culture– Understand the locality in which you are operating

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Global Software Development – in summary

• There are problems which exist– No one model for GSD– Many influencing factors are not technical

• There are solutions• But

– Project Managers, Software Engineers and Developers need to become more knowledgeable about problems and potential solutions

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References

• Casey, Valentine, A Study of the Factors and Issues which Facilitate and Obstruct the Operation of Globally Distributed Virtual Software Testing Teams. PhD Thesis, University of Limerick, 2007.

• Casey, Valentine and Ita Richardson, Implementation of Global Software Development: A Structured Approach, Software Process Improvement and Practice, Volume 14, 2009, pp247-262, DOI: 10.1002/spip.422.

• Richardson, Ita, Valentine Casey, John Burton, Fergal McCaffery, Global Software Engineering: A Software Process Approach, Chapter 2, in Collaborative Software Engineering, edited by Mistrík, I.; Grundy, J.; Hoek, A. van der; Whitehead, J., 2010, ISBN: 978-3-642-10293-6.

• Šmite, Darja, PhD Thesis, Riga Information Technology Institute, University of Latvia, 2007.

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• The information presented in these slides has been collected from a variety of sources including research carried out by post-doctoral researchers and PhD students at Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, Ireland under the supervision of Dr. Ita Richardson and involvement by the author in the Siemens Global Studio Project.

• The research presented in this lecture has been partially supported by Science Foundation Ireland funded through Global Software Development in SMEs Cluster Grant (no 03/IN3/1408C) and Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre (CSET grant no 03CE2/I303.1).

Acknowledgements