Investigation of Time Delay Factors in Global Software Development

Global Software Development (GSD) projects are passing through different boundaries of a company, country and even in other continents where time zone differs between both sites. Beside many benefits of such development, research declared plenty of negative impacts on these GSD projects. It is important to understand problems which may lie during the execution of GSD project with different time zones. This research project discussed and provided different issues related to time delays in GSD projects. In this paper, authors investigated some of the time delay factors which usually lie in GSD projects with different time zones. This investigation is done through systematic review of literature. Furthermore, the practices to overcome these delay factors which have already been reported in literature and GSD organizations are also explored through literature survey and case studies.




References:
[1] S. Betz and J.M├ñkiö, "Amplification of the COCOMO II regarding
Offshore Software Projects," 2nd IEEE International Conference on
Global Software Engineering, 27th- 30th August 2007, Munich Germany,
pp. 35-46.
[2] D. Šmite, "Global Software Development Projects in One of the Biggest
Companies in Latvia: Is Geographical Distribution a Problem," In the
SPIP journal, Wiley, vol.11, pp. 61-76, 2006.
[3] J. Noll, S. Beecham and I. Richardson, "Global Software Development
and Collaboration: Barriers and Solutions," ACM Inroads, September
2010, vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 66-78.
[4] M. Nordio, H. C. Estler, B. Meyer, J. Tschannen, C. Ghezzi, E. D. Nitto,
"How do Distribution and Time Zones affect Software Development? A
Case Study on Communication," Sixth IEEE International Conference
on Global Software Engineering, IEEE Computer Society, 2011, pp.
176-184.
[5] E. Hossain, P. L. Bannerman and D. R. Jeffery, "Scrum Practices in
Global Software Development: A Research Framework," Berlin
Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag, 2011, pp. 88-102.
[6] F. J. Kile, L. Donald and S. Shah, "The Importance of Effective
Requirements Management in Offshore Software Development
Projects," School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Pace
University, 2005.
[7] S. Betz, J. Makio and R. Stephan, "Offshoring of Software
Development - Methods and Tools for Risk Management," In
Proceedings of the international Conference on Global Software
Engineering, August 27 - 30, 2007, ICGSE. IEEE Computer Society,
Washington, DC, pp. 280-281.
[8] J. D. Herbsleb and A. Mockus, "An Empirical Study of Speed and
Communication in Globally Distributed Software Development," IEEE
Trans. Softw. Eng. 29, 6 (Jun. 2003), pp. 481-494.
[9] J. D. Herbsleb, A. Mockus, T. A. Finholt and R. E. Grinter, "Distance,
dependencies, and delay in a global collaboration," In Proceedings of
the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2000,
United States, pp. 319-328.
[10] T. Nguyen, T. Wof and D. Damian, "Global software development and
delay: Does distance still mater?" University of Victoria, Canada. 2008,
IEEE publication.
[11] B. Kitchenham and S. Charters, "Guidelines for performing Systematic
Literature Reviews in Software Engineering," vol. 2.3 EBSE Technical
Report, EBSE-2007-01, Software Engineering Group, School of
Computer Science and Mathematics, Keele University, Keele, UK,
2007.
[12] J. A. Espinosa and E. Carmel, "The Effect of Time Separation on
Coordination Costs in Global Software Teams: A Dyad Model," In
Proceedings of the 37th Annual Hawaii international Conference on
System Sciences (Hicss'04) - Track 1 - Volume 1 (January 05 - 08,
2004). HICSS. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 10043.1.
[13] J. D. Herbsleb, D. Moitra, " Global Software Development", Lucent
Technologies, IEEE March/April, 2001 edition.
[14] A. E. Milewski, M. Tremaine, R. Egan, S. Zhang, F. Köbler and P.
O'Sullivan, "Information "bridging" in a global organization," In
Proceedings of the 2007 Conference of the Center For Advanced
Studies on Collaborative Research, Canada, October 22 - 25, 2007,
CASCON '07. ACM, New York.
[15] M. Cataldo, M. Bass, J. D. Herbsleb and L. Bass, "On Coordination
Mechanisms in Global Software Development," In Proceedings of the
international Conference on Global Software Engineering, August 27 -
30, 2007, ICGSE. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC.
[16] B. Xu, H. Hu, Y. Ling, X. Yang, Z. He and A. Ma, "Achieving better
collaboration in Global Software Design with Micro Estimation",
Berlin Heidelberg, Springer-Verlag, 2007, pp. 357-366.
[17] D. Smite, " A Case Study: Coordination Practices in Global Software
Development", Springer-Verlag, vol. 3547, pp. 234-244.
[18] J. A. Espinosa and E. Carmel, "The Impact of Time Separation on
Coordination in Global Software Teams: A Conceptual Foundation",
Software Process Improvement and Practice. 2003, vol. 8, pp. 249-266.
[19] R. Kommeren and P. Parviainen, "Philips experiences in global
distributed software development," Empirical Softw. Eng, vol. 12(6),
Dec. 2007, pp. 647-660.
[20] D. Šmite, N. B. Moe and R. Torkar, "Pitfalls in Remote Team
Coordination: Lessons Learned from a Case Study," In Proceedings of
the 9th international Conference on Product-Focused Software Process
Improvement, Italy June 23 - 25, 2008, vol. 5089. Springer-Verlag,
Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 345-359.
[21] D. Šmite and J. Borzovs, "A Framework for Overcoming Supplier
Related Threats in Global Projects", In Proceedings of the Int. Conf. on
European Software Process Improvement (EuroSPI), published in LNCS
by Springer Verlag, October 2006, Finland, pp. 49-60
[22] D. E. Damian, D. E. and D. Zowghi, "The Impact of Stakeholders?
Geographical Distribution on Managing Requirements in a Multi-Site
Organization," In Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary IEEE Joint
international Conference on Requirements Engineering, September 09 -
13, 2002, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp. 319-330.
[23] P. Marttiin, J. A. Lehto and G. Nyman, "Understanding and Evaluating
Collaborative Work in Multi-Site Software Projects - A framework
proposal and preliminary results," in Proceedings of 35rd Hawaii Int.
Conference on System Sciences, 2002, IEEE, pp. 1-10.
[24] D. Zowghi, "Does Global Software Development Need a Different
Requirements Engineering Process?," Proceedings of International
Workshop on Global Software Development - ICSE 2002, Orlando,
Florida, USA, 2002, pp. 53-55.
[25] D. Damian, F. Lanubile and T. Mallardo, "The role of asynchronous
discussions in increasing the effectiveness of remote synchronous
requirements negotiations," In Proceedings of the 28th international
Conference on Software Engineering, Shanghai, China, May 20 - 28,
2006, ICSE '06. ACM, New York, NY, pp. 917-920.
[26] N. S. Shami, N. Bos, Z. Wright, S. Hoch, K. Y. Kuan, J. Olson and G.
Olson, "An experimental simulation of multi-site software
development," In Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Centre For
Advanced Studies on Collaborative Research, Canada, October 04 - 07,
2004, IBM Press, pp. 255-266
[27] J. A. Espinosa, N. Nan and E. Carmel, "Do Gradations of Time Zone
Separation Make a Difference in Performance? A First Laboratory
Study," In Proceedings of the international Conference on Global
Software Engineering, August 27 - 30, 2007, ICGSE. IEEE Computer
Society, Washington, DC, pp. 12-22.
[28] M. Vanzin, M. B. Ribeiro, R. Prikladnicki, I. Ceccato and D. Antunes,
"Global Software Processes Definition in a Distributed Environment,"
In Proceedings of the 29th Annual IEEE/NASA on Software
Engineering Workshop, April 06 - 07, 2005, SEW. IEEE Computer
Society, Washington, DC, pp. 57-65.
[29] E. Carmel, Global Software Teams Collaborating Across Borders and
Time Zones (Prentice Hall, 1999).