Tools to Support Global Software Development Processes

With so many challenges associated with GSD it became very difficult for human to control everything and take every decision. The current challenges in Global Software Development (GSD) necessitate support from software tools with special features.

Online availability, Communication ,Awareness,Knowledge Management and Control and Coordination are some of the issues the tools need to deal with.

In order to make classification ISO/IEC 12207 has been chosen.

It define taxonomy for software lifecycle processes and provide guidelines to constructor to follow certain standard. The SLPs, defined in this standard, are divided into tasks and activities:-

a)          primary processes 

b)          supporting processes and 

c)         organizational processes

All the tools discussed in the paper are divided into three category.The first group is composed of tools to support Project processes . In this case, these tools principally support project management activities. These tools specifically integrate features to support the Project Planning Process  and Project Assessment and Control Process of the ISO/IEC 12207. The second group is composed of tools supporting implementation processes . The processes included in this group are  SW Requirements Analysis Process, SW Architectural Design Process, SW Detailed Design Process, SW Construction Process  and  SW Integration Process.The third group is composed of software tools that support some of the SW Support Processes. In this group we have specifically included tools to support SW Documentation Management  process and  SW Configuration Management process.All the tools attempt to reduce the problems caused by geographic distance (PA1) by offering a web-based environment which allows distributed team members at any location to interact. With all these things in mind selection of proper set of tool is also a big issue.