Josiane Kroll

A Systematic Literature Review of Best Practices and Challenges in Follow-the-Sun Software Development

Follow-the-sun (FTS) software development is a strategy used to reduce the length of software projects that are developed across globally distributed locations. However, due to communication and collaboration challenges, software companies find it difficult to adopt this development strategy during task allocation and daily project handovers. In this study, we present results from a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) performed on papers published between 1990 and 2012. Our goal was to identify best practices and challenges for FTS implementation. We found 36 best practices and 17 challenges for FTS. These results are discussed in this paper in order to indicate opportunities for future research and make our results useful for the project managers.

Survivability Models for Global Software Engineering

Software projects that are engineered using global software development techniques are required to deploy processes and tools to support collaboration over large geographies. Specifically, these projects involve the deployment of processes and tools to support project management, communication, and risk management. Whereas a traditional software development effort can use standard processes and tools to support communication and collaboration, global software development efforts require a unified and holistic project management, development process, collaboration, and communication approach taking into consideration the interplay of time zones, number of sites and cultural diversity. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for modeling and quantification of global software engineering frameworks. In our approach, we apply transient survivability metrics to support the design of global software engineering projects. Therefore, our approach combines survivability analysis and global software engineering frameworks analysis. The survivability metric used in this paper is the time required to recover from a software project disaster (e.g., break down in communication between remote teams) for a given global software engineering framework. The global software engineering modeling framework we use is composed of models supporting the evaluation of communication tools, software development processes and cultural diversity management. We illustrate the application of our approach by applying it to the analysis of an example derived from a real global software engineering project. Our results indicate that the combination of survivability analysis and modeling of global software engineering frameworks can provide meaningful insights when designing global software engineering frameworks.

Mapping Global Software Development Practices for Follow-the-Sun Process

Several organizations are developing software processes twenty-four hours, seven days per week, with geographically distributed teams. This environment of software development enables to implement the Follow-the-Sun (FTS) strategy. In this study, we perform a mapping of the literature based upon electronic searching in digital libraries to identify applied practices in development environments twenty-four hours in which can be apply FTS strategy. Ours results present practices and many key aspects to FTS implementation.

Researching into Follow-the-Sun Software Development: Challenges and Opportunities

Several organizations that develop software in global scale face issues related to coordination, communication and culture. The Follow-the-Sun (FTS) strategy is a type of global development with the purpose of reducing the duration of the project development and hence, increases productivity. However, FTS is not easy and it is not well discussed in the literature, with few studies discussing challenges and research opportunities. In order to promote a better understanding of FTS, this paper presents the state of the art about FTS, as well as the challenges and research opportunities, helping others in the planning of future studies in this area.

Breaking Collaboration Barriers through Communication Practices in Software Crowdsourcing

Software Crowdsourcing (SW CS) is an emerging area in Software Engineering (SE). It has a dynamic nature in which problems are opened up to crowds of people through an open call to solve problems with the incentive of prizes for the best solutions. Although SW CS has been increasingly adopted in the software industry, many open issues are still to be elucidated. For instance, collaboration aspects are one of those issues. They impact communication and coordination practices. This study aims to identify barriers to collaboration in SW CS and communication practices that might help overcome these barriers. We identified the barriers and practices from a qualitative data analysis study considering an available literature review report. Our study contributes to the SE area by providing insights for researchers, tool designers, and managers that might help them to better understand collaboration issues and proposed solutions to solve them.

The Evolution and Impact of the Research in Distributed Software Development in Brazil

A comunidade mundial de Engenharia de Software tem testemunhado uma mudança significativa na forma com que os projetos de software têm sido desenvolvidos nas últimas duas décadas: as equipes vêm sendo organizadas com seus integrantes geograficamente distantes uns dos outros. O termo Desenvolvimento Distribuído de Software (DDS) tem sido cada vez mais utilizado na academia e na indústria para especificar este contexto de desenvolvimento, bem como suas peculiaridades e problemas. Ao mesmo tempo, esta mudança vem causando impacto não apenas no mercado em si, mas na maneira como os produtos de software estão sendo modelados, construídos, testados e entregues para os clientes. Neste sentido, o DDS tem atraído um grande número de pesquisas na área de Engenharia de Software. No Brasil isto não é diferente. Existem registros de pesquisas sendo desenvolvidas no país desde 1999. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar e discutir como a pesquisa em DDS tem evoluído no país a partir de uma avaliação histórica de artigos sobre este assunto, qual o impacto desta pesquisa tanto em nível nacional como internacional e o papel da comunidade brasileira de Engenharia de Software no desenvolvimento desta área. Discute-se também a visão de futuro para pesquisas na área.

Investigating the Adoption of Agile Practices in Mobile Application Development

The mobile application development market has been dramatically growing in the last few years as the complexity of its applications and speed of software development process. These changes in the mobile development market require a rethinking on the way the software development should be performed by teams. In order to better understand how agile practices support mobile application development, we applied a questionnaire to 20 undergraduate students. These students have been training in an iOS development course combined with agile practices. Our study aims to identify challenges and to report the students experience on the adoption of agile practices to develop mobile applications. Our findings reveal that agile practices help mobile software development mainly in terms of project management and control and development speed. However, aspects of user interface and user experience, different development platforms, and users expectations still point challenges in developing mobile applications.

Empirical evidence in follow the Sun software development

ContextFollow the Sun (FTS) development is a special case of Global Software Development. It is applied in the context of global projects to reduce the software development life-cycle duration. A number of studies have attempted to aggregate a better understanding of FTS development, but it is still an immature research area. ObjectiveThis paper aims to investigate the existing empirical evidence about FTS research with a focus on identifying what research has been conducted in the area and which results have been obtained. MethodTo achieve this goal, we performed a systematic mapping study to answer our research questions: Which FTS studies have been published in the literature? and What empirical support is provided for them? We investigated papers published between 1990 and 2017. The synthesis was made through classifying the papers into different categories (research topics, research methods, conferences and journals venues for FTS research, and countries involved in FTS research). ResultsWe selected 57 papers using a predefined search strategy. The majority of the papers discussing FTS were published in the International Conference on Global Software Engineering (ICGSE). The main research topic addressed is processes and organization development for FTS. Case studies combined with the interview as a research sub-method is adopted in the most studies performed in FTS. The majority of the existing research and the most active researchers in this topic are from the United States and Brazil. However, India and the United States are the countries that appear most often in the studies conducted to investigate FTS. ConclusionOur findings suggest that FTS software development is an up-to-date research topic in Software Engineering. However, little information about FTS has been published over the last few years. The emergent need in this research is the development of evaluation research for testing FTS feasibility and effectiveness in practice.

Challenges and Practices for Effective Knowledge Transfer in Globally Distributed Teams

In the context of Global Software Development (GSD), team members face a number of challenges that needs to be solved. One of them relates to the transfer of knowledge needed to fulfil the required tasks. The knowledge transfer process may be organized and implemented in various ways, as companies use varying strategies to transfer knowledge from onsite to offshore sites. However, without effective knowledge management practices, success in GSD will be difficult. In this paper, we aims to identify the process activities of knowledge transfer in globally distributed teams, challenges and suitable solutions for effective knowledge transfer. In order to achieve this objective, a systematic literature review (SLR) of the existing knowledge transfer literature is conducted. Our findings describing the process of knowledge transfer in globally distributed teams, a set of challenges and recommended practices for effective knowledge transfer. Finally, we conclude this study with a discussion of the directions for further and future research.

An Initial Framework for Researching Follow-the-Sun Software Development

Global software companies are restructuring their IT area by extending operations to offshore software development centers. Thus, follow-the-sun (FTS) development is seen as a potential software development strategy for these companies. But so far, FTS is relatively understudied (only nine empirical studies published). Moreover, the success cases of FTS usage in the software industry are still small. The lack of studies to close the gap between theory and practice is observed as the main barrier to the FTS evolution. In this study, we present a framework to support research on FTS software development. The proposed framework aims to support empirical studies and meta-analysis on FTS. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we propose an initial framework for researching FTS software development, including independent, dependent and context variables. Additionally, we discuss research challenges, and directions for future research. Our paper aims to provide both a guide and motivation for researchers to better understand how to research FTS and to develop new theories in the area.