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Improving Global Software Engineering through Improved

Processes

Dr. Ita Richardson

18th April, 2012

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Presentation Structure

• My background• Global Software Development• Understanding the problems• Providing a solution: Global Teaming Model• Conclusion

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My Research Background

• Software Quality and Software Process:– Global software development– Small software development companies– Regulated industry

• Medical Device & Hospitals– Services

• Principal Investigator within Lero• Research supervision • Lecture to Undergraduate and Postgraduate Software

Engineering students

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What is Global SoftwareDevelopment?

Casey and Richardson, 2006, Carmel, 1999, Hayes, 2002, Crow and Muthuswamy, 2003

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• Global Software Development (GSD) is carried out by teams of knowledge workers located in various parts of the globe developing commercially viable software for a company

• Often, centralised software development is moved from “home” locations to dispersed teams or/and external organisations in remote locations

• Distributed Software Development and Global Software Development are similar except that GSD teams are always global.

Global Software Development

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Global Software Development

• Increasing number of people working in global development teams

• From a process perspective, transferring local processes to global is not a solution

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What happens in Global Software Development?

Geographic Distance

Linguistic Distance

Cultural DistanceTemporal Distance

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Geographic Distance +Linguistic Distance +Cultural Distance +Temporal Distance=Global Distance

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Software Development Teams

• Traditional team – Social group of individuals collocated – Tasks are interdependent– Activities to achieve common goals

• Global Software Development team– Usually use virtual teams to develop software– Same goals and objectives as traditional– Affected by Global Distance– Linked by communication technologies

Powell et al., 2004, Lipnack & Stamp, 1997

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• To understand why Global Software Development was not working in industry

• To develop a solution to support the implementation of GSD in industry

Research Problem

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Empirical Research Methods

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GSD problems

Casey, 2008Casey, 2008

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What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

There is no one model for Global Software Development

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19 MODELS OUT OF 38 SURVEYED PROJECTS

Variety of Collaboration Models(Šmite, 2007)

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Collaboration Models

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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

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

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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

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Project Management

Culture

What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

Cultural DistanceNational CultureReligious CultureAttitude to AuthorityGender Differences

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Project Management

Culture

Communication

What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

LanguageCommunication toolsKnowledge TransferTemporal Issues

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

What are the BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES?

Fear

Motivation

Trust

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Effective GlobalSoftware Development

Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

Fear of losing jobs prevents good communication between teams

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Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

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

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Effective GlobalSoftware

Development

Project Management

Culture Fear

Communication

BARRIERS AND COMPLEXITIES

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Empirical Research Methods

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Global Teaming Model

Richardson et al, 2010

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Global Teaming Model

• Process for effective Global Software Engineering

• Structured model:– Specific Goals– Specific Practices– Sub-Practices

• Can and should be used with existing processes

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Global Teaming Model

SPECIFIC GOAL 1:

Define Global Project

ManagementSpecific Practice SP 1.1

Global Task Management

Spec

ific

Prac

tice

SP 1

.2

Kno

wle

dge

and

Skill

s

Specific Practice SP 1.3

Global Project Management

Identify business competencies required by team members in

each location

Identify cultural requirements of each

local sub-team

Identify communication skills for GSE

Establish relevant criteria for training

Determine team and organisational structure

between locations

Determine the approach to task allocation

between locations

Identify GSE project management tasks

Assign tasks to appropriate team

members

Ensure awareness of cultural profiles by project managers

Establish cooperation and coordination

procedures between locations

Establish reporting procedures between

locations

Establish a risk management strategy

Establish cooperation and coordination procedures between locations

Richardson et al., 2010

Specific Practice SP 1.3Global Project Management

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Establish cooperation & coordination procedures between locations

• Provide suitable infrastructure• Define suitable software development processes• Define management procedures • Jointly plan and agree achievable milestones • Identify and monitor project costs, time,

productivity, quality and risk

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Threats: Global Project Management not implemented

• Because Project Managers are based remotely– Cannot ‘see’ contribution from each team member– May not know skills and knowledge

• Competent people may agree unrealistic amounts of work – Serious implications for the individuals and projects– Only sustainable in the short term

• Lack of recognition and understanding of cultural needs

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Global Teaming Model

SPECIFIC GOAL 2:

Define Management

Between Locations

Specific Practice SP 2.2

Collaboration between

locations

Define how conflicts & differences of opinion between locations are addressed & resolved

Implement a communication strategy for the team

Establish communication interface points between the team members

Implement strategy for conducting meetings between locations

Identify common goals, objectives and rewards

Collaboratively establish and maintain work product ownership boundaries

Collaboratively establish and maintain interfaces and processes

Collaboratively develop, communicate and distribute work plans

Implement strategy for conducting meetings between locations

Specific Practice SP 2.1Operating Procedures

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Implement strategy for conducting meetings between locations

• Identify and use appropriate global meeting technology

• Set up procedures to ensure participants can agree or disagree with points raised

• Provide opportunities for participants to offer new ideas.

• Circulate agenda prior to meeting• Clearly minute actions agreed at meeting within

a short time frame

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Threats: Operating Procedures not implemented

• Impact due to use of asynchronous tools– Amount of information between members reduced

• When difficult to communicate– How and when to contact, when to expect response– Project inefficiencies, de-motivated team members

• Shared meetings– Inefficient if people cannot contribute– Work will not be done unless minutes shared and

actions made clear

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Empirical Research Methods

Currently underway within Financial

Services company

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Conclusion

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In summary

• Global Software Development is an expanding trend• Industrialists and academics need to be prepared to

understand and implement GSD• There are benefits to be gained from GSD if

implemented correctly• There are difficulties which will arise if not

implemented correctly• Management need to implement an informed GSD

strategy in their organisation

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A few highlights:

• Not only technical factors have to be taken into account, but also social and cultural ones

• Social capital is important in GSD – engineering human relationships

• Psychological factors such as trust, motivation and fear play a significant role

• There are knowledge-intensive and complex aspects to GSD• Domain knowledge needs to be preserved• Use of the Global teaming model adds structure to GSD

efforts• Problems should be dealt with instead of outsourcing them!

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Acknowledgements

• Research underlying this presentation has been supported by:– Science Foundation Ireland CSET grant to Lero– Science Foundation Ireland Investigator Programme, B4-STEP (Building

a Bi-Directional Bridge Between Software ThEory and Practice)– Science Foundation Ireland cluster project, GSD for SMEs– Science Foundation Ireland cluster project, socGSD– Siemens Corporate Research Global Studio Project– Various Irish companies

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Presentation Structure

• My background• Global Software Development• Understanding the problems• Providing a solution: Global Teaming Model• Conclusion

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Further recommended reading

• Deshpande, S., Beecham, S., Richardson, I. (2011), "Global Software Development Coordination Strategies - A Vendor Perspective", Pg. No 153-174, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, Volume LNBIP91, New Studies in Global IT and Business Service Outsourcing, Part 1, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011, (Edited By: J. Kotlarsky, L.P. Willcocks, and I. Oshri)

• Richardson, Ita, Valentine Casey, John Burton, Fergal McCaffery, Global Software Engineering: A Software Process Approach, in Collaborative Software Engineering, edited by Mistrík, I.; Grundy, J.; Hoek, A. van der; Whitehead, J., 2010, ISBN: 978-3-642-10293-6, pp35-56.

• Richardson, Ita, Daniel Paulish and June Verner, Research Directions for Global Software Engineering – where to next?, Guest Editors’ Introduction, Journal of Software Evolution and Process, Volume 24, Issue 2, March 2012, pp 115-117.

• Carmel, E. and Agarwal, R. (2001) Tactical Approaches for Alleviating Distance in Global Software Development, IEEE Software, 1, 2, 22 - 29.

• Casey V and Richardson I, Virtual Software Teams: Overcoming the Obstacles, 3rd World Congress on Software Quality 2005, pp63-70, Munich, Germany, 2005

• 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.

• Casey, Valentine and Richardson, Ita, The Impact of Fear on the Operation of Virtual Teams, Special issue on Global Software Engineering, Software Process Improvement and Practice, Volume 13, 2008, pp511-526.

• Damian, D. E. and Zowghi, D. (2003), An insight into the interplay between culture, conflict and distance in globally distributed requirements negotiations, Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS’03). IEEE. 2002., Hawaii, 1 - 10.

• Ebert, C. and De Neve, P. (2001) Surviving Global Software Development, IEEE Software, 18, 2, 62 - 69.• Herbsleb, J. D. and Mockus, A. (2003) An Empirical Study of Speed and Communication in Globally Distributed Software Development,

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 29, 6, 481-494.• Herbsleb, J. D. and Moitra, D. (2001) Global Software Development, IEEE Software, 1, 2, 16 - 20.• Herbsleb, J. D., Paulish, D. J. and Bass, M. (2005), Global software development at siemens: experience from nine projects, Proceedings of

the 27th international conference on Software engineering, St. Louis, MO, USA, 524 - 533.• Linnane, Seán and Ita Richardson, Distributed Software Development – difficulties for the SME. In Perspectives in Software Quality,

Proceedings of Software Quality Management Conference, SQM2006, 10th-12th April, 2006, Southampton, U.K. pp 113-128.• Karolak D W, Global Software Development: Managing Virtual Teams and Environments. Wiley-IEEE Computer Society 1998, ISBN 0-818-

68701-0

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Further recommended reading

• Rad P F and Levin G, Achieving Project Management Success using Virtual Teams. J. Ross Publishing 2003, ISBN 1-932-15903-7• Ebert C and De Neve P (2001). Surviving global software development, Ieee Software. 18, 62-69.• Herbsleb J D and Grinter R E, Splitting the Organisation and Integrating the Code: Conway's Law Revisited, Proceedings of the 21st

international conference on Software engineering 1999, pp85-95, LA, CA, USA, 1999• Herbsleb J D, Paulish D J, Bass M, Global Software Development at Siemens: Experience from Nine Projects, Proceedings of the 27th

International Conference on Software Engineering 2005, pp524-533, St. Louis, MO, USA, 2005• Mistrík, I.; Grundy, J.; Hoek, A. van der; Whitehead, J. (editors), Collaborative Software Engineering, 2010, ISBN: 978-3-642-10293-6• Olson J S and Olson G M (2003). Culture Surprises in Remote Software Development Teams, ACM Queue. 1, 52-59.• Prikladnicki R, Audy J L N, and Evaristo R (2003). Global Software Development in Practice: Lessons Learned, Software Process

Improvement and Practice. 8, 267-281.• Richardson, Ita, Daniel Paulish and June Verner, "Research Directions for Global Software Engineering – where to next?" Guest Editors’

Introduction, Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice (forthcoming).• Richardson, Ita, Sarah Moore, Alan Malone, Valentine Casey and Dolores Zage, Globalising Software Development in the Local Classroom

through Virtual Teams in:– IT Outsourcing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (4 Volumes), edited by Kirk St.Amant, Business Science Reference, ISBN 978-1-60566-770-6,

2009.– Software Applications: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications (6 Volumes), edited by Pierre F. Tiako, Information Science Reference, ISBN 978-1-60566-

060-8, 2009.– Information Systems and Technology Education: From the University to the Workplace, edited by Rod Turner and Glenn Lowry, IGI Global, pp 82-104, ISBN 978-1-

59904-114-8, 2007.

• Sangwan, Raghvinder, Neel Mullick, Matthew Bass, Daniel J. Paulish and Juergen Kazmeier, Global software development handbook Auerbach Publications, 2006, isbn-10: 0849393841, isbn-13: 9780849393846

• Sparrow E A, A Guide to Global Sourcing: Offshore Outsourcing and other Global Delivery Models. BCS 2005, ISBN 1-902-50561-1• Sabherwal R (2003). The Evolution of Coordination in Outsourced Software Development Projects: A Comparison of Client and Vendor

Perspectives, Information and Organisation. 13, 153-202.

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References

• Carmel E, Global Software Teams: Collaborating Across Borders and Time Zones. Prentice-Hall 1999, ISBN 0-139-24218-X• Casey, Valentine, Software Testing and Global Industry: Future Paradigms, edited by Ita Richardson and Mícheál Ó hAodha, Cambridge

Scholars Publishing, 2008, ISBN: 97801-4438-0109-6.• Casey, Valentine and Ita Richardson, Uncovering the Reality within Virtual Software Teams, International Conference on Global Software

Engineering, ICGSE06, Florianopolis, Florianopolis, Brazil, 16-19 October 2006, IEEE Computer Society, CD Proceedings, ISBN 0-7695-2663-2.

• Crow, G. and Muthuswamy, B. (2003) International Outsourcing in the Information Technology Industry: Trends and Implications., Communications of the International Information Management Association, 3, 1, 25 - 34.

• Hayes Ian S., Ready or Not: Global Sourcing is in Your IT Future. Cutter IT Journal, 2002. 15(11): p. 5 - 11.• Imsland, Vegar; Sahay, Sundeep- ‘Negotiating Knowledge': The Case of a Russian-Norwegian Software Outsourcing Project, Scandinavian

Journal of Information Systems 2005• Lipnack, J. and Stamp, J. (1997) Virtual Teams: Reaching Across Space, Time And Originating With Technology, John Wiley & Sons.• O'Brien, J. A. (2002) Management Information Systems Managing Information Technology in the Business Enterprise, Mc Graw Hill Irwin.• Ó Conchúir, E., Holmstrom, H., Ågerfalk, P. J. & Fitzgerald, B. (2006) Exploring the Assumed Benefits of Global Software Development.

International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE). Florianópolis, Brazil.• Powell, A., Piccoli, G. and Ives, B. (2004) Virtual Teams: A Review of Current Literature and Direction for Future Research, The DATA BASE

for Advances in Information Systems, 35, 1, 6 - 36.• Richardson, Ita, Valentine Casey, John Burton, Fergal McCaffery, Global Software Engineering: A Software Process Approach, in

Collaborative Software Engineering, edited by Mistrík, I.; Grundy, J.; Hoek, A. van der; Whitehead, J., 2010, ISBN: 978-3-642-10293-6, pp35-56.

• Rottman, J.W.- Knowledge Transfer within Strategic Alliances, First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007)

• Toaff, S. S. (2002) Don't Play with "Mouths of Fire," and Other Lessons of Global Software Development, Cutter IT Journal, 15, 11, 23 - 28.• Wieandt, Michaela - The Development of Knowledge Transfer and Collaboration in a Nearshore Software Development Project, First

Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

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Thank You&

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