Christina Manteli

ABSTRACT A common collaboration structure in global software development (GSD) is clustering, wherein people tend to be closer to others with whom they share common characteristics. Clusters often create barriers in communication, coordination and expertise awareness between remote teams, restraining the development of transactive memory (TM). In order to overcome such barriers, the role of brokers has emerged. In this paper, we examine the role of brokers as facilitators in the development of transactive memory. We use social network theory to analyze the collaboration of an EU-funded project, where development teams come from different partners and different locations. Our results suggest that task-based clusters emerge and that project members who coordinate activities as well as those who contribute to the code development act as brokers. Our empirical evaluation shows that clustering has a negative effect on TM and that brokers can moderate that effect.

Context: The way global software development (GSD) activities are managed impacts knowledge transactions between team members. The first is captured in governance decisions, and the latter in a transactive memory system (TMS), a shared cognitive system for encoding, storing and retrieving knowledge between members of a group.
Objective: We seek to identify how different governance decisions (such as business strategy, team configuration, task allocation) affect the structure of transactive memory systems as well as the processes developed within those systems.
Method: We use both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. We collect quantitative data through an online survey to identify transactive memory systems. We analyze transactive memory structures using social network analysis techniques and we build a latent variable model to measure transactive memory processes. We further support and triangulate our results by means of interviews, which also help us examine the GSD governance modes of the participating projects. We analyze governance modes, as set of decisions based on three aspects; business strategy, team structure and composition, and task allocation.
Results: Our results suggest that different governance decisions have a different impact on transactive memory systems. Offshore insourcing as a business strategy, for instance, creates tightly-connected clusters, which in turn leads to better developed transactive memory processes. We also find that within the composition and structure of GSD teams, there are boundary spanners (formal or informal) who have a better overview of the network’s activities and become central members within their network. An inter- esting mapping between task allocation and the composition of the network core suggests that the way tasks are allocated among distributed teams is an indicator of where expertise resides.
Conclusion: We present an analytical method to examine GSD governance decisions and their effect on transactive memory systems. Our method can be used from both practitioners and researchers as a “cause and effect” tool for improving collaboration of global software teams.

In the past few years, software engineering researchers adopt social network analysis techniques to understand collaboration patterns in global software teams. In this paper, we investigate current research in global software development where social network theory is used as an analysis technique. We do so through a systematic literature review where we collect and analyze previous work that adopt a social network perspective in distributed software development. We use the 3C collaboration model to classify our results based on the communication, coordination and cooperation aspects of global networks. Our results reveal two main coordination structures used in distributed teams, namely the clustering and the core-periphery structure. The analysis of the cooperation activities of the global networks reveal differences between planning and practice. Finally, several tools have been identified that aim to improve communication patterns among distributed team members.

With the expansion of national markets beyond geographical limits, success of any business often depends on using software for competitive advantage. Furthermore, as technological boundaries are expanding, projects distributed across different geographical locations have become a norm for the software solution providers. Nevertheless, when implementing Global Software Development (GSD), organizations continue to face challenges in adhering to the development life cycle. The advent of the internet has supported GSD by bringing new concepts and opportunities resulting in benefits such as scalability, flexibility, independence, reduced cost, resource pools, and usage tracking. It has also caused the emergence of new challenges in the way software is being delivered to stakeholders. Application software and data on the cloud is accessed through services which follow SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) principles. In this paper, we present the challenges encountered in globally dispersed software projects. Based on goals mutually shared between GSD and the cloud computing paradigm, we propose to exploit cloud computing characteristics and privileges both as a product and as a process to improve GSD.

Software Development Governance (SDG) is an emerging field of research, under the umbrella of information technology governance. SDG challenges increase when software development activities are distributed across multiple locations. Coordination of knowledge management processes requires specific attention in multi site development. This paper outlines a multi-site software governance structure, based on three aspects: the business strategy that binds the relationship of the remote offices, the structure and composition of the remote teams and the way tasks are allocated across sites. Knowl- edge management processes (including knowledge creation, knowledge transfer and communication) are identified and the influence of different governance structures on these processes is discussed. We do so through a case study at Oce ́, a multi- national company in printing systems.

This paper presents an empirical research to the relations and dependencies between the fields of software product management and software project management in product software companies. By carrying out interviews and an online survey, we answer several current business issues on the leadership roles of product and project managers within the organizational structure, and provide a definition of software products and software projects based on their dependencies.

This paper researches the way the fields of SoftwareProduct Management and Software Project Management collaborate with each other, within software product companies. It analyzes the dependencies between software product and software project and the relationships between product and project managers. The software product is defined based on the market success, customer satisfaction and meeting the internal business goals. Software projects are defined based on the delivery time, the quality and the cost incurred from the project development. Product and project managers are characterized upon their role specific qualifications as well as their positioning within the organizational structure of a software product vendor.

The research is theory oriented. It concludes with some theory propositions as the result of both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis. The theory propositions describe the relationships between Software Product Management and Software Project Management. The findings show that project's quality is the most influential factor for the product's market success as well as for the customer satisfaction. Product managers are proved to be more business oriented, focusing on Strategic and Tactical decision-making. Project managers need more technical skills and they are more involved with Operational and Tactical decisions.

The purpose of the research is to provide the software product companies with a benchmarking information of the current status of the market in Software Product Management and Software Project Management aspects. The results answer current business issues such as the positioning of the roles of a product manager and a project manager within the company as well as their dependencies in the organizational structure, as they are used in the contemporary market.