Global Software Development (GSD) is increasingly becoming the norm of software development, which is facilitated by state-of-art information and communication technology (ICT), with the primary goal of rationalizing this development. Hence, it is also a tremendously growing field of research over last decades. Herbsleb and Moitra [1] have identified following imperatives that are the driving force of this field.
- Capitalization of the talent pool and resource usage whenever needed,
- Business advantages of the new markets,
- Quick formation of virtual teams to capitalize market needs,
- Improvement of time-to-market by utilizing “around-the-clock” development,
- Flexibility to capitalize on merger and acquisition opportunities globally.
Additionally, implementation GSD is difficult [1, 2, 3, 4] because of its different inherent problems. Herbsleb and Moitra outline the major dimension of problems in GSD as follows[1].
- Strategic issues: determination of project that are disjoint architecturally, as much as possible.
- Cultural issues: realizing and acknowledging different cultural differences.
- Inadequate communication and knowledge management.
- Project and process management issues: synchronizing between project and product management deadlines.
- Technical and infrastructural issues.
References
[1] J. D. Herbsleb and D. Moitra, “Global software development,” IEEE Software, vol. 18(2), pp. 6-20, 2001.
[2] R. Sangwan, et al., Global Software Development Handbook (Auerbach Series on Applied Software Engineering Series): Auerbach Publications, 2006.
[3] R. Kraut, et al., “Coordination and Virtualization: the Role of Electronic Networks and Personal Relationships,” Organization Science, vol. 10, pp. 722-740, 1999.
[4] E. Carmel and R. Agarwal, “Tactical approaches for alleviating distance in global software development,” IEEE Software, vol. 1(2), pp. 22-29, 2001.
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