Globally Distributed Software Development Project Performance: An Empirical Analysis

Software firms are increasingly distributing their software development effort across multiple locations. In this paper we present the results of a two year field study that investigated the effects of dispersion on the productivity and quality of distributed software development. We first develop a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: RAMASUBBU, Narayanasamy, BALAN, Rajesh Krishna
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2007
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/819
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/1818/viewcontent/p125_ramasubbu.pdf
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Software firms are increasingly distributing their software development effort across multiple locations. In this paper we present the results of a two year field study that investigated the effects of dispersion on the productivity and quality of distributed software development. We first develop a model of distributed software development. We then use the model, along with our empirically observed data, to understand the consequences of dispersion on software project performance. Our analysis reveals that, even in high process maturity environments, a) dispersion significantly reduces development productivity and has effects on conformance quality, and b) these negative effects of dispersion can be significantly mitigated through deployment of structured software engineering processes.