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Philips experiences in global distributed software development

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Abstract

Global software development is increasingly common. Main expected benefits are improvements in time-to-market efficiency and access to greater—and less costly—resources. A number of problems are still to be solved before the full potential of global development can be obtained. This paper describes the experience of over 10 years of global distributed development at Philips, derived from about 200 projects. We discuss the experience and lessons learnt from multi-site development. Main lessons learned are that explicit agreements and ways of working should be defined for the following areas needing the most attention; team coordination and communication, requirements and architectures, integration, and configuration management. In addition, we discuss the experience gained from subcontracting software development to suppliers. Main lesson learned from subcontracting software development is the need for explicit attention and ways of working with respect to selection of suppliers, specification of the work to be subcontracted and establishment and content of the contract.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Hans Aerts from Philips for providing information on distributed product development in Philips Consumer electronics and Ben Spierenburg from Philips for reviewing the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philips Applied Technologies, P.O. Box 218 / SFJ-7, 5600 MD, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Rob Kommeren

  2. VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland

    Päivi Parviainen

  3. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, P.O. Box 1100, 90571, Oulu, Finland

    Päivi Parviainen

Authors
  1. Rob Kommeren
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  2. Päivi Parviainen
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Correspondence to Päivi Parviainen.

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Editor: Forrest Shull

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Kommeren, R., Parviainen, P. Philips experiences in global distributed software development. Empir Software Eng 12, 647–660 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-007-9047-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-007-9047-3

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