Geographically Distributed Software Development

Geographically distributed software development holds much promise for increasing market penetration and speeding up development cycles. However, it also comes with a set of new challenges for those developing the software, bought about by the distance among colleagues. This paper outlines a new research project underway to explore those issues and their implications for organizing geographically distributed software development efforts. We also describe the approaches we are taking towards providing solutions --- in the form of processes and technology --- to address the challenges of working remotely. INTRODUCTION Geographically distributed development has become a way of life for many divisions of Lucent Technologies, and all indications are that it will be increasingly prevalent in the future. There are at least three compelling motivations. First, there is increased global demand for telecommunications products and services due to deregulation and innovations such as digital wir..

Distance, dependencies, and delay in a global collaboration

Collaborations over distance must contend with the loss of the rich, subtle interactions that co-located teams use to coordinate their work. Previous research has suggested that one consequence of this loss is that cross-site work will take longer than comparable single-site work. We use both survey data and data from the change management system to measure the extent of delay in a multi-site software development organization. We also measure site interdependence, differences in same-site and cross-site communication patterns, and analyze the relationship of these variables to delay. Our results show a significant relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy. This result is particularly troubling in light of the finding that workers generally believed they were as helpful to their remote colleagues as to their local colleagues. We discuss implications of our findings for collaboration technology for distributed organizations