Software Quality and Development Speed in Global Software Development Teams - The Role of Previous Working Ties and National Diversity

The paper draws on information processing theory to propose that national diversity creates barriers to the integration of information among members of global software development teams, negatively impacting software quality and development speed. However, the effect of such relationships was expected to be contingent upon the amount of time that team members had worked together in the past (i.e., previous working ties). Hypotheses were tested in a field study involving 62 global software development teams distributed across Europe and Central and South America. Teams with high levels of previous working ties developed greater quality software at a faster pace. National diversity had a positive effect on software quality in teams with high levels of previous working ties, but a negative effect in teams with low levels of previous working ties. National diversity also had a negative impact on software development speed, but the effect was less pronounced among teams with high levels of previous working ties than on teams low in previous working ties

Improving Bespoke Software Quality: Strategies for Application and Enterprise Architects

Despite over 50 years of software engineering as a formal practice, contemporary developers of bespoke software follow development practices that result in low-quality products with high development and maintenance costs. This qualitative case study sought to identify strategies used by software and enterprise architects for applying architectural best practices to improve bespoke software quality and lower the total cost of ownership. The study population was application and enterprise architects associated with delivering bespoke software for the enterprise architecture team at a large enterprise in the Nashville, Tennessee metropolitan area. Interview data were collected from 7 enterprise or solution architects; in addition, 47 organizational documents were gathered. Guided by the principles of total quality management, thematic analysis was used to identify codes and themes related to management of quality in software solutions. Prominent themes included focusing on customer satisfaction, collaborating and communicating with all stakeholders, and defining boundaries and empowering people within those boundaries. The findings from this research have implications for positive social change, including improved work-life balance, morale, and productivity of software and enterprise architects through streamlining development and maintenance activities