What Are The Challenges For GSE

Interest in Global Software Engineering is briskly growing in software industry. Stakeholders from different national, organizational cultures and time zones are involved in developing software and implemented at different locations with the help of information and communication technologies.

Nowadays, software developing organizations have adapted global software development (GSD) with distributed development sites. GSD or also known as Global Software Engineering (GSE) or Distributed Software Development (DSD) can be defined as developing software with development teams distributed in different geographical locations. The teams can be within the same organization (off-shore) or different organizations (outsourcing).

Most companies venture into GSD situations so as to take advantage of the benefits that are perceived to be associated with such settings. The perceived benefits include gaining competitive advantage, maintaining proximity to market, improving time to market with “round-the-clock” development, and accessing cheap yet skilled labor. Apart from being geographically dispersed, globally dispersed teams face the possibility of experiencing different time zones and having social, cultural and normative differences. These differences in time zones and cultural background add challenges to GSD, especially with respect to communication, coordination, and control. Pervasiveness of numerous challenges in GSD makes it a risky venture. These problems gets failure as result to complete the project on routine and went over the budget.

Various studies have reported and suggested different mitigation approaches to some of the risks and challenges that may hinder the success of a GSD project. Carmel. Given six integrable forces are the solutions that can associate with global software teams together which make them more efficient. Those forces consist of telecommunication infrastructure, project architecture, team building, development technique, managerial approach collaborative technique. They can be used as basis determine strategies that can diminished issues come across in distributed projects.

The aim of this research is to determine and elaborate the significant difficulties experience in distributed software development projects and the strategies to address them. This achieved by gathering GSE related challenges and their mitigation strategies expressed in empirical studies on GSE. This study interpret that what are the challenges and challenges are for GSE and how issues can be solved.

The aim will be achieved by following these objectives:

• Recognition of GSE related challenges and their mitigation strategies could be published in empirical research which will further compiled into checklist.
• Development of GSE related checklist with their corresponding mitigation strategies help through the identification of GSE related challenges specify in published empirical research.
• Identification of GSE related challenges and their mitigation strategies popular in industry though survey.
• Determine whether empirical studies in GSE detail challenges that are determine in survey identified through but not yet define in literature.
• Elaborate on the challenges and mitigation strategies which will provide support for the development of GSE risk management approach.

Risk Management is a systematic approach to reduce impairment due to risks, making the project less sensitive and the product more hefty. Risk management is essential in every business and to make project successful. The target of risk management is to identify uncertainties in order to reduce loss and decrease objective achievements. The implication of each risk determine by convenient mitigation actions.

The importance of risk management has made its application to be more structured overtime. There are various approaches in implementing risk management as addressed in literature and standards. There is a consensus that risk management mainly entails processes in developing risk management planning, riski dentification, risk evaluation, risk monitoring, and also developing risk mitigation strategies.

GSD has additional challenges compared to collocated software development. GSD exacerbates existing risks and introduces new risks that are unique to this setting. As a result, the work in GSD environments is more problematic than in centralized ones, and the effective risk management can never be depreciated. The risk management importance must be emphasized and its participation must be more decisive in the GSD projects. Moreover, effective risk management is an alternative for coping with the GSD related challenges.

Systematic Literature Review (SLR)

Systematic Literature Review (SLR) is “a means of identifying, evaluating and interpreting all available research relevant to a particular research question, or topic area, or phenomenon of interest”. SLR is a form of secondary study, while the individual studies included in the systematic review are called primary studies.

SLR helps researchers to reduce preference and provides basis for understanding state of art in GSE. An SLR is conducted mainly to gather GSE complexities, challenges, risks as well as mitigation related strategies.

There are three reasons to perform SLR, and these reasons will also applicable for this research:

1. To identify current evidence on a particular analysis of technology and identify challenges that are essential to GSE along with their mitigation strategies.
2. To identify difference in the current research and suggest future work.
3. To provide a background to start new research from collected challenges and mitigation strategies further it will proceed with systematically and organize them into checklists and further used to identify challenges and practices in industry.

The main reason for conducting SLR in this research to ensure we thoroughly cover all circumstances surrounding challenges and mitigation strategies for projects run in GSE setting.

Benefits Brief Explanation Extent of Realization

Cost Reduction

• Software development companies for manufacturing, are also looking for low wages programmers from low wages countries as offered in countries like India and China. Partially Realized
• Improved time to market Software developing companies are expecting to have round-the-clock development as well as using time zone difference. Hence it will increase number of working hours in a day it will reduce the software development lifecycle. Not Realized
• Modularization of tasks - Modularization of software development tasks facilitates in development of software components make it easier to release software in development. Partially Realized
• Access to trained workforce Software development companies would like to have the best programmers or designers in the world. Partially Realized
• Proximity to market Software companies would like to have close proximity with customers because it gives specifically advantage essential processes. Partially Realized

GSE related challenges studies report the challenges and mitigation strategies from one empirical study. In this thesis challenges and strategies are compiled collectively from various empirical studies conducted in industry as well as academic settings. From the related work it can be seen that GSD challenges are multi-faceted and the practices are highly situational. The aim of this study is to identify challenges and mitigation strategies gathered from empirical studies in GSE from various platform,The related work done for identifying challenges and mitigation strategies is develop according to certain aspects.

The challenges reported by respondents from various roles and responsibilities in which project managers, team leaders, as well as developers. It shows the most reported challenges that are faced by different team members in the project.

Communication Coordination Control

Cultural diversity separated by geographical boundaries Ensuring all remotes sites are aware of change to essential projects Project member leaving during the project Acquiring extra costs for traveling Provide convenient project scope Preparing accurate effort assessment Less face to face meetings Defining a software development processes that suits the project Avoid of rework of developed components.

The mitigation strategies reported by respondents from various roles and responsibilities in which project managers, team leaders, as well as developers. It shows the most reported mitigation strategies that are faced by different team members in the project.

Communication Coordination Control

Accommodate or adjust communication methods and coordination pattern that suits the project Clearly defining work processes and requirements for each task. Adjustments of communication and coordination patterns that suit project changes.

• Use a common language for communication (i.e. English) Maintaining and sharing a archive for project antifacts.
• Promote regular project status update between sites.
• Enable face to face communication Providing access to convenient collaboration tools(e.g. company email ,telephone groupware tools etc.)
• Provide employee benefits

Deduction

Furthermore GSE and different settings and scenarios, Thus checklists should be base for identifying appropriate challenges and mitigation strategies in particular scenario. even though data in checklists are more organized in particular order but some of the challenges and mitigation strategies fall in different category as well. For instance one challenge still be issue in coordination as well as in control.

Risk identification and risk management process is consider more difficult in GSE projects. It is due to lack of knowledge regarding GSE setting. even most experienced project manager fails in GSE project. Therefore checklists can also be integrated as tools in risk management processes specially as a foundation in risk and risk mitigation plans.

There is also no one to one relationship between the challenges and mitigation strategies.GSD settings are different and vary therefore strategy that may work in one situation. Therefore it is essential analysis conducted on the issue and the possible strategies, to determine most effective and useful relief methods.

Conclusion

The GSE risk and mitigation strategies reported in literature that were discussed through the support of empirical data that were gathered through the help of system literature review. This brutal method was used specifically on empirical research to know the knowledge on the current trend of surroundings challenges of GSE projects.

The two checklists were developed using data obtained from SLR. One checklist is about identified challenges and another is about mitigation strategies. Both are related with distributed software settings. Furthermore, from the survey reports, it can been seen that there is a connection between a person’s role and the challenges he or she face during project.