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Supporting team coordination across organizational boundary in Global software

development

Supervised byReidar Conradi

Daniela S. CruzesTorgeir Dingsøyr

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Agenda

IntroductionProblem outlineResearch questionsExpected contributionsResearch designPreliminary resultPublication planAppendixes

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Introduction• Global software development (GSD) as a modern

paradigm in producing software intensive products– 80 - 90% of software projects are now globally distributed

(Fryer & Gothe, 2008)– Large companies have many distributed branches:

Microsoft, Google, Ericson, Phillips, Siemens …– Software offshoring – big market : 270 bil USD in 2010, grow

at 5-8% per year– Growth of Open source communities:

160000 projects in Source Forge, doubled in 7 years Many new OSS repository in last 7 years: Google Code, Ohloh,

Github, Gitorious …

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Introduction• Many remaining challenges …

… to name a few

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… 91% of them [interviewed developers] reported problems working with colleagues across geographic locations… (Espinosa et al., 2003)… distributed work items appear to take about 2.5 times as long to complete as similar items where all the work is collocated …(Herbsleb et al., 2003)… a distributed binary has 9.2% more failures than a collocated binary … (Bird et al., 2009)… likelihood of integration failures is almost 14 times higher than when all engineers are in the same location … (Cataldo et al., 2011)

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Introduction• GSD main issue: distance matters (Noll et al. 2010, Smite et al. 2010)

– Geographical distance– Temporal distance– Cultural distance– Organizational distance– Work process distance

• Influenced factors:

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Communication Coordination Control

Team productivity Software quality Project performance

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Introduction

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Model for IS project success (Espinosa et al., 2006)

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Introduction• Research issue 1: influence of distances are often

hard to investigate– Distances are often mixed with each other:

• Compare between distributed task and collocated task• No distinguish between inter and intra organizational context

– Hard to understand the influence of separate distance• Little or no control of other distances when investigating one• Lack of good proxy for measuring distances

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Introduction• Research issue 2: Relatively small amount studies on

inter-organizational context in GSD– On organizational strategies– On engineering process– On relationship to software quality and team performance

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Introduction

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Distribution of research topics on GSD (Smite et al., 2010)

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Introduction

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Organizational distance

Cultural distance

Work process distance

Temporal distance

Geographical distance

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Empirical studies on GSD distances and project outcomes

Research on influence of global distances on project outcomes (Nguyen-Duc et al., 2012)

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Introduction• Research issue 3: little amount of studies on OSS

ecosystem as a case of GSD– Homogeneous engineering process– Diverse organizational objectives & policies– Study on OSS ecosystem often focus on business model

level– Empirical studies on influence of global distances on team

coordination and project outcomes: only 1 (out of 45 papers) in OSS context (Nguyen-Duc et al., 2012)

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Problem outline• Team coordination is important for GSD project

success (Herbsleb et al., 2003, Espinosa et al., 2006)– is a necessity, complexity and overhead in GSD

• Team coordination:– “activities required to maintain consistency within a work

product or to manage dependencies within the workflow” (Malone et al., 1990)

• Team coordination mechanism (adapted from Kotlarsky et al.,

2008)– By organization design– By work standard– By shared artifacts and infrastructure– By interpersonal process

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Problem outline• There are a research gap on studying influences of

organizational distances on team process (such as team coordination) and project outcomes in various GSD context (commercial vs. OSS projects)

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Problem outline

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Organizational plane

Social plane

Technical plane- Development tasks- Source code files

It is necessary to consider organizational boundary in socio-technical systems

Adapted from (Kwan et al., 2010)

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Problem outline

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Mechanism Activity Organizational issue

Organizational design

Align organization structure with product structure – Conway laws

limited by organizational collaboration policy, infrastructure and process

Work standard Establish common management, collaboration, engineering process: Agile process, OSS development

Shared artifacts Common infrastructure - GIT, CVS, JIRA

Interpersonal process

Facilitate communication, relationship building

Current proposed solution on team coordination are often relied within organization boundary

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Research questions• How team coordination across organizational

boundaries can be improved in GSD?

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Research questions

① RQ1: What characterize organizational boundaries in team coordination in GSD?

② RQ2: How do organizational boundaries influence team coordination in GSD?

③ RQ3: What kind of coordination practices support team coordination across organizational boundaries in GSD?

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Expected results

① A comprehensive view on team coordination challenges with global boundaries with a specific focus on organizational boundary challenges and solutions

② A conceptual framework for team coordination across organizational boundaries in GSD

③ A recommendation for coordination practices across organizational boundaries in GSD

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Studies

① Collaborative process between firms and OSS community on adopting OSS components

② Differences among firm paid developers in OSS projects in team collaboration

③ Relationship between GSD distances, team coordination and project outcomes

④ Challenges with collaborating across organizational boundary in GSD projects

⑤ Merging divergent code bases in inter-organizational software projects

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Research design

① (Pre-determined) survey

② Exploratory case studies

③ Systematic literature review

④ Exploratory case studies

⑤ Confirmative case studies

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Research plan

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Preliminary result1. P01: Nguyen Duc, A., Cruzes D.S., Ayala C.P. and Conradi, R. 2011. Impact of

Stakeholder Type and Collaboration on Issue Resolution Time in OSS Projects. OSS 2011, Salvador, Brazil, October 2011

2. P03: Nguyen Duc, A., Cruzes D.S., Conradi, R., Hst M., Franch X. and Ayala, C.P. 2012. Collaborative Resolution of Requirements Mismatches When Adopting Open Source Components. REFSQ 2012, Essen, Germany, March 2012

3. P04: Ayala, C.P, Cruzes D.S., Nguyen Duc, A., Conradi, R., Franch X., Host M. and Muhammad A.B. 2012. OSS Integration Issues and Community Support: An Integrator Perspective. OSS 2012, Hammamet, Tunisia, September 2012. Accepted

4. P06: Nguyen Duc, A., Cruzes D.S. and Conradi, R. 2012. Dispersion, coordination and performance in global software teams: a systematic review. ESEM 2012, Lund, Sweden, September 2012.

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Preliminary result① RQ1: What characterize organizational boundaries in team

coordination in GSD?– difference in task resolution time and communication delay

between firm-paid developers and volunteers (P01)– functional and non-functional requirement mismatches are

handled in cooperative process between commercial firms and OSS community (P03)

– common problems that organizations face when integrating OSS component (P04)

② RQ2: How do organizational boundaries influence team coordination in GSD?– challenges with dispersion dimensions and their

relationship to team coordination and performance in GSD (P06)

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Publication plan

5 more included publications.

① RQ1: What characterize organizational boundaries in team coordination in GSD?– P08 [conference paper]

② RQ2: How do organizational boundaries influence team coordination in GSD?– P07 [journal paper]– P10 [conference paper]

③ RQ3: What kind of coordination practices support team coordination across organizational boundaries in GSD?– P09 [conference paper]– P11 [journal paper]

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