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Global Software Engineering: A Software Process Approach

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Collaborative Software Engineering

Abstract

Our research has shown that many companies are struggling with the successful implementation of global software engineering, due to temporal, cultural and geographical distance, which causes a range of factors to come into play. For example, cultural, project management and communication difficulties continually cause problems for software engineers and project managers. While the implementation of efficient software processes can be used to improve the quality of the software product, published software process models do not cater explicitly for the recent growth in global software engineering. Our thesis is that global software engineering factors should be included in software process models to ensure their continued usefulness in global organisations. Based on extensive global software engineering research, we have developed a software process, Global Teaming, which includes specific practices and sub-practices. The purpose is to ensure that requirements for successful global software engineering are stipulated so that organisations can ensure successful implementation of global software engineering.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A variety of terms exist: Distributed Software Development, (DSD), Global Software Development (GSD), or Global Software Engineering (GSE). We will use the term GSE this chapter.

  2. 2.

    Company names are all pseudonyms.

  3. 3.

    We use the term ‘global distance’ when we discuss geographical, temporal and cultural distance collectively.

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Acknowledgement

The research presented in this chapter has been supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland through the GSD for SMEs cluster project, grant no. 03/IN3/1408C, within Lero – the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre. This research is partially support by the Software Systems Research Centre, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, UK. This research is partially supported by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Stokes Lectureship Programme, grant number 07/SK/I1299.

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Correspondence to Ita Richardson .

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Glossary

CMMI

Capability Maturity Model Integrated

GSD

Global Software Development

GT

Global Teaming

Insourcing

Allocating work to a subsidiary or internal department of the client organisation.

Nearshoring

Software development work is either insourced or outsourced to a team located in a country that is geographically close to the client organisation’s country.

Offshoring

Software development work is either insourced or outsourced to a team located in a country geographically far from the client organisation.

Onshoring

Software development work is either insourced or outsourced to a team located in the same country as the client organisation.

Outsourcing

Delegating work to a non-client entity, such as a software vendor.

SPICE

ISO/IEC 15504

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Richardson, I., Casey, V., Burton, J., McCaffery, F. (2010). Global Software Engineering: A Software Process Approach. In: Mistrík, I., Grundy, J., Hoek, A., Whitehead, J. (eds) Collaborative Software Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10294-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10294-3_2

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