A Canvas for Establishing Global Software Development Collaborations

Jufo-id:80620There is an increasing need and interest for organizations to collaborate with internal and external partners on a global scale for creating software-based products and services. Potential risks and different strategies need to be addressed when setting up such collaborations. Aspects such as cultural and social features, coordination, infrastructure, organizational change processes, or communication issues need to be con- sidered. Although there are already experiences available with respect to setting up global collaborations, they mainly focus on specific areas. It is dicult for companies to quickly assess if they have considered all rele- vant aspects. An overall aid that guides companies in systematically setting up global collaborations is widely missing. In this paper we present a study based on the snowballing method as a systematic approach to literature review. Based on this literature review and inputs from indus- try we investigated what aspects and practices need to be considered when establishing global software development collaborations and how to prioritize them. Based on that we created activity roadmaps that aggregate existing experiences. Reported experiences were structured into nine main aspects each containing extracted successful practices for set- ting up global software development collaborations. As a result we came up with an initial version of a canvas that is proposed as guidance for companies for setting up global collaborations in the software development domain.Peer reviewe

Usability Challenges in Smartphone Web Access: A Systematic Literature Review

Part 8: International Workshop on Information Engineering and ManagementInternational audienceSystematic literature reviews facilitate methodical understanding of current advances in a field. With the increasing popularity of smartphones, they have become an important means to access the web. Although the literature on this topic is growing in recent times, there has been no effort yet to systematically review it. This paper reports on a systematic literature review of primary studies from 2007 to 2012 that concern mobile web usability. We identify the usability dimensions tested and the testing procedures adopted in the literature. We anticipate that our work will not only help researchers understand the current state of usability testing of mobile web but also identify the areas where further research is needed in addressing the challenges identified

Information flows at inter-team boundaries in agile information systems development

Agile software development methods are being used on larger projects thus the study of inter-team communication are becoming an important topic of interest for researchers. This research addresses inter-team communication by exploring the tools and three different boundaries, inter-team, team and customers, and geographically separated teams. In this research, we gathered data from semi-structured face-to-face interviews which were analyzed following the grounded theory approach. Our study reveals consensus from different teams on the importance of virtual Kanban boards. Also, some teams members tend to adapt to other teams’ preferred communication tool. We observed challenges around interdependent user stories among the different teams and highlighted the problems that rise at the different boundaries. Keywords: agile information system development • inter-team communication • agile team boundary • communication • agile methods • cooperating agile team

First results of ex situ conservation of endangered wild plants of Latvia in the National Botanic Garden

Abstract In 1981, the National Botanic Garden of Latvia began the ex situ conservation of rare and endangered native plants. About 70 species of endangered plants of Latvia are now successfully grown in vitro. The aim of this study was to determine suitable conditions for ex situ cultivation in the territory of the National Botanic Garden, where four artificial habitats (dune and meadow, deciduous tree forest, humid bank and ditch with spring water) were created or used for growth and survival experiments with individuals of 23 endangered wild plant species. Twenty of the species successfully adapted to the implemented growth conditions. Alyssum gmelini, Dianthus arenarius, Helianthemum nummularium showed good adaptation in dry and sunny conditions of artificial dune. Galium schultesii, Pulmonaria angustifolia, Scrophularia umbrosa showed good adaptation to fertile soil and shady conditions of deciduous forest. The short-lived species as Spergularia salina and Tripolium vulgare were identified as difficult species for cultivation

Socio-technical congruence sabotaged by a hidden onshore outsourcing relationship: Lessons learned from an empirical study

Despite the popularity of outsourcing arrangements, distributed software development is still regarded as a complex endeavor. Complexity primarily comes from the challenges in communication and coordination among participating organizations. In this paper we discuss lessons learned from participatory research carried out in a highly distributed onshore outsourcing project. Previous research established that socio-technical congruence principles alleviate distributed work. In practice we have found that alignment between the systems structure and organizational structure can be studied from different abstraction levels and also during different phases of project lifecycle. We have found that official organizational structure differed from the applied one, which meant that the planned alignment in task allocation strategies was broken. Our findings indicate that the lack of socio-technical congruence caused several implications, including unclear responsibilities, delays in problem turnaround, conflicting changes, and non-delivered parts

Software architecture as a means of communication in a globally distributed software development context

The management and coordination of globally distributed development poses many new challenges, including compensating for informal implicit communication, which is aggravated by heterogeneous social and engineering traditions between development sites. Although much research has gone into identifying challenges and working with practical solutions, such as tools for communication, little research has focused on comparing communication mechanisms in terms of their ability to provide large volumes of rich information in a timely manner. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with eleven practitioners and twenty-eight responses through a web-based questionnaire from three product lines at an international software development organization. This paper assesses the relative importance of ten commonly used communication mechanisms and practices across local and global development sites. The results clearly indicate that some communication mechanisms are more important than others in providing large volumes of rich information in a timely manner. The prevalence of architecture in providing rich information in large volumes for both local and global communication can be clearly observed

Exploring cross-site networking in large-scale distributed projects

Context: Networking in a distributed large-scale project is complex because of many reasons: time zone problems can make it challenging to reach remote contacts, teams rarely meet face-to-face which means that remote project members are often unfamiliar with each other, and applying activities for growing the network across sites is also challenging. At the same time, networking is one of the primary ways to share and receive knowledge and information important for developing software tasks and coordinating project activities. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to explore the actual networks of teams working in large-scale distributed software development projects and project characteristics that might impact their need for networking. Method: We conducted a multi-case study with three project cases in two companies, with software development teams as embedded units of analysis. We organized 20 individual interviews to characterize the development projects and surveyed 96 members from the total of 14 teams to draw the actual teams networks. Results: Our results show that teams in large-scale projects network in order to acquire knowledge from experts, and to coordinate tasks with other teams. We also learned that regardless of project characteristics, networking between sites in distributed projects is relatively low.acceptedVersio