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Distributed software development (DSD) has intensified over the past few years, and DSD project management is more complex than collocated project management. However, no systematic research effort has focused on aggregating evidence from the scientific literature to build models to support project management on DSD context. For these reasons, the goal of this paper is to build an evidence-based model of DSD project management from the research findings about challenges of DSD and the practices, models and tools proposed and used to overcome these challenges. We based the construction of this model on the evidence collected and synthesized by a comprehensive systematic mapping study of 70 research papers published between 1997 and 2009. We believe that our results can help practitioners and researchers to better understand the challenges and implement more effective solutions to improve project management within distributed project management teams. These results also provide a mapping of the research about DSD project management, identifying areas where further research is needed. Table III. Practices of distributed software development project management. Human factors Process and technology Localization and infrastructure Rules and norms P3. Multiple communication modes including support to face-to-face synchronous communication P1. Provision of and training in collaboration and coordination tools P09. To secure office space for local teams P11. Effective policies for confidentiality, copyright protection, and intellectual property P4. Training on different cultures/instill a sense of cultural awareness P2. To apply agile practices (Scrum) 632 FABIO Q. B. DA SILVA ET AL.At this point, we relate the practices, tools, and models with the challenges they are supposed to address. To increase the relevance and reliability of the mappings between challenges and proposed solutions, only practices, tools, and models rated as having high quality of evidence are presented. Besides, to improve readability, only relationships that have been addressed in more than one study are presented. We present the relationships between challenges and practices (Table VI) and the relationships between challenges and tools and models (Table VII). The 13 challenges shown in Table VI seem to be well covered by a set of 14 practices presented in studies with good quality of evidence. The shades of gray in the cells of the table emphasize that certain combinations of challenges and practices have been proposed more often than others. The challenges C01-effective communication and C02-cultural differences have been addressed mainly using five related practices: P01-provision of and training in collaboration and coordination tools; P4-training on different cultures; P5-creation of communication protocols; P11-effective policies for confidentiality, copyright protection, and intellectual property; and P3-multiple communication modes. Moreover, as mentioned before, the deployment of Scrum has been also used to improve communication in four dif...

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RESUMENLa emergencia y la magnitud que los problemas ambientales han ganado en las tres ultimas décadas han posibilitado una gran producción científica acerca del tema de la ecología y el medio ambiente, principalmente en relación a como la humanidad se debe comportar delante de la naturaleza. Es frecuente en las ciencias sociales la utilización de los términos ecológico y medioambiental como sinónimos. Todavía, desde el punto de vista de la ética es necesario hacer distinciones debido a las concepciones teóricas que dan sostenibilidad a las discusiones, una vez que existen divergencias conceptuales fundamentales que deben ser aclaradas para que no se cometa el error de mezclar concepciones y teorías que son fundamentalmente distintas y deben dar la profundidad teórica que la problemática exige. Así, este trabajo se propone a aclarar las dos concepciones haciendo la distinción entre lo que debe ser tratado como ética medioambiental y ética ecológica, dando énfasis en este ultimo concepto y haciendo una recopilación de los principales autores que fundamentan esta corriente teórica, de forma a servir de texto orientador para quien necesite de estudiar la ética ecológica con profundidad, incluso dando soporte para estudios en áreas como la sociología y la economía.PALABRAS CLAVE: Ética ecológica, ética, medio ambiente, ecología Ecological or environmental ethics?ABSTRACT The urgency and magnitude of environmental problems over the last three decades has led to extensive scientific productivity around the subject of ecology and the environment, principally in relation to humankind´s treatment of nature. In the social sciences, ecology and environment are often used as synonyms. However, from the point of view of ethics, it is necessary to make a distinction due to the theoretical concepts that lend sustainability to these discussions. Fundamental conceptual differences must be clarified in order to avoid confusing concepts and theories that are fundamentally distinct and provide the theoretical depth that the issue requires. As such, this work proposes to clarify the two concepts, making the distinction between what should be considered environmental ethics versus ecological ethics, with emphasis on the latter concept. A literature review of key contributions to this line of theory is included in order to support studies in the disciplines of sociology and economics and provide orientation for those who wish to pursue in-depth studies of ecological ethics.

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During the software development process, artifacts are constructed and manipulated by many developers working in parallel. A common practice to manage parallel development is the use of branches in the version control system. Usually, at some point, the merge of these branches may be necessary. This process can combine two independent and eventually long sequences of commits, which may have been performed by different developers. Conflicts resulting from the merge of parallel changes may arise. When these conflicts are not automatically solved by the version control system, the developers in charge of the merge process must act. Normally, the developers' knowledge regarding the changes performed in parallel is usually not taken into consideration when assigning developers to the merge task. With this in mind, the goal of this work is to characterize the problem of developers' assignment for merging branches. To do so, this work analyzed merge profiles of eight software projects and check if the development history is an appropriate source of information for identifying the key participants for collaborative merge. In addition, this work presents a survey on developers about what actions they take when they need to merge branches, and especially when a conflict arises during the merge.