Global software development coordination strategies - A vendor perspective

Abstract

Global software development (GSD) is often impeded by global distance which may be geographical, cultural, temporal or linguistic. This results in the requirement for specific strategies to coordinate a range of activities between client and vendor teams in the GSD environment which are different from a collocated setting. GSD literature recommends many coordination strategies, but tends to take the client viewpoint. However, these should also be viewed from the vendor perspective. This paper addresses this gap by presenting coordination strategies which we identified from GSD literature and an empirical research study which we carried out with vendor companies in India. Comparing these coordination strategies with relevant strategies in the human resource management section of the PMBOK® Guide, we have defined a set of strategies which can be used by GSD Project Managers when coordinating a project. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.