Geographically Distributed Development : trends, challenges and best practices

Abstract

Economic and market forces as well as technological progress emerging throughout the last decade signifies the Geographically Distributed Development (GDD) or Global Software Development (GSD) as a software industry norm or necessity that is receiving considerable interest from companies all over the world. This thesis clarifies the terms used in distributed development practice, studies the status, key business drivers and major challenges of GDD or GSD, and then proposes a revised six-force framework to leverage the capabilities of geographically distributed development model. The proposed framework covers both the strategic and tactic aspects of investing and managing a global project team, including Strategic Vision and Management Skills, Organizational Structure and Team Building, Collaborative Technologies, Development Methodology and Software Life-Cycle Management in planning and managing distributed project and leveraging global teams. This thesis uses a case study to validate the challenges and concerns identified and to conclude that many problems in geographically distributed development can be overcome to enable companies to systematically harness the potential of this development model.