Global Software Development

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Overview

• Process Management

• Effective Partitioning

• Skills Management

• Team Selection

• Case Studies

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Three Cases for

Discussion

throughout

session

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Factors that need to be considered

Project Management Culture Communication Fear

GSD

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1. The challenges of embedded knowledge

• Client: Norwegian subsidiary of company with 13 000 employees located across Europe

(headquarters in Finland, primary Nordic focus, providing consultancy services on business

systems)

• Activity: redesign of a payroll management system used by nearly 11000 small and medium sized

companies in Norway

• Vendor: Russian company (St. Petersburg, 110 employees, part of the Fort Ross Consortium) • Interesting aspects: trust, domain knowledge,

language barrier, project management, lack of formal specifications.

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Russian-1999 – negotiations started

Delphi -> MySQL

After 9 months, Norwegians visiting Russia

Norwegian PM appointed

Russians working on an estimate

After 5 months: near-breakdown Russian reps visiting Oslo

15 Mb no specs no internal knowledge hidden costs no direct communication no common language lack of embedded knowledge

sailors working abroad foreigners working in Norway

people living in Northern Norway

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Lessons learned

• “Don’t outsource your problems!”

• The importance of trust, informal

relationships, social networking

• The enthusiasm on the vendor side – learning

Norwegian, willing to find out more about the

Norwegian culture

• The importance of context – understanding

the Norwegian pay & taxation system –

“embedded knowledge”

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Moving from

local to global

development

what global

process do we

implement?

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• Defined Roles and Responsibilities • Risk • Coordination • Visibility • Tools • Technical Support • True Cost • Reporting requirement • Information • Process Management • Effective Partitioning • Skills Management • Team Selection

Project Management

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Process Management

• Process for software development (Iocal/global)

• Specific requirements of Global Software

Development

– For example, escalation and communication procedures

• Shared developed ownership

– Good software practice .. Processes developed by those closest to the process

– Negotiation of process – Level 5 vs Level 3

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Process Management

• Exclusive ownership

– Does not allow for cooperation – Alienation of team members

• Clearly defined and documented

• Establish common goals, objectives, rewards

• Training provided

• Good processes can remove communication

requirements

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Effective Partitioning

• Partitioning of development

– Architecture

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Partitioning of Development

• Consider division

– What is the system architecture?

• Consider integration

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Siemens Global Studio Project - Module

Partitioning and Integration

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Relating Architecture to business goals

• How does technical decision affect

business goals?

– Product lines

– Regulatory considerations

– Cultural influences

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Partitioning of Development

• Risks and trade-off

• Global Software Development

– Greater complexity

– Need to understand risks

– Know where potential mismatch can cause

problem

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GSD and Architecture

• Making drivers explicit

– Distribution of teams does not allow correction in timely manner

• Distributed teams do not share intuition

• Technology choices based on skills

– Developers outside organisation – Unfamiliarity with domain

– Skills not known by architects

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Partitioning of Teams

• Manage the partitioning

– Requires more communication

– Requires more technical knowledge

• Determines level of communication between

teams

• Determines level of support required between

locations

• Strategy should take team communication

into account

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Partitioning of Work

• Partitioning of development

– Architecture

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2. Keeping the knowledge and partitioning the work

• Client: US Fortune 100 manufacturer of industrial

equipment with over 75,000 employees spread across 20 countries

• Activity: development and deployment of embedded software systems

• Vendors: two big software providers + one small specialised company (all in India)

• Interesting aspects: partitioning work, IP protection, motivation, strong&weak ties, networking, liaisons, knowledge transfer, personnel retention

(Rottman, J.W.-Knowledge Transfer within Strategic Alliances, First Information Systems Workshop

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motivation work partitioning IP protection networking knowledge transfer liaisons weak ties personnel retention strong ties talent pipeline

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Lessons learned:

• Maintaining an own strong development

team; motivating it for sharing

• Overlap of liaisons on site

• Securing the supplier employees’ fidelity for

at least 1 year

• Visits to India; informal relationships

encouraged

• Several suppliers, different components

• IP protection, competition among suppliers

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Communication Language Communication Tools Knowledge Transfer Temporal Issues Motivation Information Skills Management Training Project Management impact

Communication

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Culture Coordination Cooperation Knowledge Transfer Communication Project Management Risk Training impacts

Culture

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Project Management

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Skills Management

• Awareness regarding all staff

• Including remote team members

• Capabilities and skill levels

• Academic and technical knowledge

• Experience relating to current position

• Knowledge of English (where relevant)

• Available to project managers and trainers

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Team Selection

• What is the strategy for team selection?

e.g. Leverage local experience combined with cheap and effective labour costs

• Technical requirements of projects

• Document structure of teams

• Roles, responsibilities, relationships, rules

• Successful management

• Coordination and operation of teams

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Team Selection

• Skills availability on team

• Including remote team members

• Team set-up

• Full remote team with local management

• Half-and-half

• Small remote team managed from onsite

• Dual reporting

• Onsite / local experience

• Synchronise support

• Impact on team operation

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3. A “job producing machine” in Poland

• Company: German software and consulting services provider (1100 employees in 6 locations in Germany and Switzerland)

• Activity: billing system as part of a larger CRM system for an automotive company

• Subsidiary: created in 2004 in Poland with fresh graduates

• Interesting aspects: nearshoring, mentorship,

knowledge transfer, social capital, motivation, trust, common language

Wieandt, Michaela - The Development of Knowledge Transfer and Collaboration in a Nearshore Software Development Project, First Information Systems Workshop on Global Sourcing: Val d'Isère, France 13-15 March 2007

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common language nearshoring mentorship knowledge transfer social capital motivation trust

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Lessons learned

• Onsite apprenticeship for knowledge transfer

• Motivation and trust on the German side

• Polish employees included in the social life of

the German site

• Personal relationships created – reciprocal

visits

• Learning through network and personal

dialogue - knowledge-as-practice-approach

• German as common language

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Emerging themes

• Creating an atmosphere of trust

• Motivating employees for knowledge transfer • Good project management – a must!

• Appropriate work partitioning

• The importance of communication tools and of corporate culture

• Hidden costs of distributed work • Maintaining onsite developers

• Mutual knowledge, transactive memory systems • Social capital – a prerequisite of success

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Project Management

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In summary

• Global Software Development is an

expanding trend

• Industrialists and academics need to be

prepared to understand and implement GSD

• There are benefits to be gained from GSD if

implemented correctly

• There are difficulties which will arise if not

implemented correctly

• Management need to implement an informed

GSD strategy in their organisation

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Questions and

Comments

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Acknowledgements

• Research underlying GSD tutorial content has been supported by:

– Science Foundation Ireland Investigator Programme, B4-STEP (Building a Bi-Directional Bridge Between Software ThEory and Practice)

– Science Foundation Ireland cluster project, GSD for SMEs – Siemens Corporate Research Global Studio Project

– A multi-national organisation in Ireland.

• Input to this tutorial was received from Dr. Gabriela Avram (SFI cluster project, SocGSD) and from

Valentine Casey and Alan Malone, post-graduate students at the University of Limerick.

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References

• Lipnack, J. and Stamp, J. (2000) Virtual Teams:

People Working Across Boundaries with Technology,

John Wiley & Sons. Inc, New York.

• Powell, A., Piccoli, G. and Ives, B. (2004) Virtual

Teams: A Review of Current Literature and Direction for Future Research, The DATA BASE for Advances

in Information Systems, 35, 1, 6 - 36.

• Sangwan, Raghvinder, Matthew Bass, Neel Mullick, Daniel J.Paulish, Juergen Kazmeier, Global Software Development Handbook, Auerbach Publications,

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