Empirical Evidence in Global Software

Engineering: A Systematic Review

Recognized as one of the trends of the 21st century, globalization of the world economies brought significant changes to nearly all industries, and in particular it includes software development. Many companies started global software engineering (GSE) to benefit from cheaper, faster and better development of software systems, products and services. However, empirical studies indicate that achieving these benefits is not an easy task. Here, we report our findings from investigating empirical evidence in GSE-related research literature. By conducting a systematic review we observe that the GSE field is still immature. The amount of empirical studies is relatively small. The majority of the studies represent problem-oriented reports focusing on different aspects of GSE management rather than in-depth analysis of solutions for example in terms of useful practices or techniques. Companies are still driven by cost reduction strategies, and at the same time, the most frequently discussed recommendations indicate a necessity of investments in travelling and socialization. Thus, at the same time as development goes global there is an ambition to minimize geographical, temporal and cultural separation. These are normally integral parts of cross-border collaboration. In summary, the systematic review results in several descriptive classifications of the papers on empirical studies in GSE and also reports on some best practices identified from literature.

                            The concept of global software engineering (GSE) originates from contract programming, which was a form of outsourcing known from the 1970s (Lee et al. 2000). In contrast to outsourcing, GSE addresses software engineering activities performed by globally distributed teams. Software development became global in the 1990s as a consequence of the PC revolution (Carmel 1999) and sequential problems of tight budgets, shortage of resources and time motivated many companies to start looking for partners or to set up development sites in different countries. As an outcome of this evolution, many companies built joint

ventures and relocated their development centers to low-cost countries. However, soon practitioners started

to realize that globally distributed development, in particular from a project management perspective, is

considerably more challenging than even the most complex project managed entirely in house (Karolak

1998). Therefore, empirical research results are needed to help understand the challenges with the aim of

helping practitioners to improve performance of global software teams. This demand for empirical results is

growing as a consequence of an increasing number of internationally distributed software organizations.