While organisations recognise the advantages offered by global software development, there are many socio-technical barriers that affect successful collaboration in this inter-cultural environment. In this paper we present a review of the global software development literature where we highlight collaboration problems experienced by a cross-section of organisations in twenty-six studies. We also look at the literature to answer how organisations are over-coming these barriers in practice. We build on our previous study on global software development where we define collaboration as four practices related to agreeing, allocating, and planning goals, objectives, and tasks among distributed teams.We found that the key barriers to collaboration are geographic, temporal, cultural, and linguistic distance; the primary solutions to overcoming these barriers include site visits, synchronous communication technology, and knowledge sharing infrastructure to capture implicit knowledge and make it explicit.
Context: Global Software Engineering (GSE) has become the predominant form of software development for global companies and has given rise to a demand for students trained in GSE. In response, universities are developing courses and curricula around GSE and researchers have begun to disseminate studies of these new approaches. Problem: GSE differs from most other computer science fields, however, in that practice is inseparable from theory. As a result, educators looking to create GSE courses face a daunting task: integrating global practice into the local classroom. Aim: This study aims to ameliorate the very difficult task of teaching GSE by delineating the challenges and providing some recommendations for overcoming them. Method:To meet our aims we pose two research questions ("When teaching GSE to students in Higher Education, what are the (a) challenges, and (b) recommendations for addressing them") and then conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) to determine the answers to these questions. Our SLR follows a carefully designed and validated protocol. Results: We found 82 papers that addressed our research questions. Our findings indicate that in addition to the challenges posed by GSE in general, particular problems arise in educational situations. The majority of these challenges fall into the "global distance" category, though teamwork challenges and people issues (such as trust) also commonly arise. Organizational differences between institutions, differing skill sets between students in different locations, and varying cultural work norms, for example, all operate within educational settings in quite different ways than in professional development teams. Integrating cultural training, conducting teamwork exercises to build trust, and instructor monitoring of team communication are all examples of techniques that have been used successfully by educators according to our review Conclusion: Despite the severity of the challenges in GSE education, many institutions have successfully developed courses and curricula targeting GSE. Indeed, for each of the challenges we have identified in the literature there are numerous recommendations for overcoming them. Instructors can use the recommendations given in this study as a starting point to running successful GSE courses.
This survey of mental health professionals in North Dakota examined their knowledge of and attitudes toward three important ethical-legal issues: confidentiality, privilege, and disclosure of information to third parties. The results of the survey demonstrated agreement on the importance of confidentiality in the therapeutic relationship. With regard to privilege, a wider range of variance among respondents suggested that the ramifications of privilege statutes (as well as those professions included or not included) are blurred among mental health professions. The results also suggested the need for clients to be informed about the conditions under which exceptions to the general principle of confidentiality will occur.In recent years, increased attention to and discussion of ethical issues surrounding the psychotherapist-client relationship has generated a growing concern for the status of client rights and protections. S/asz (1960, 1970) has argued that the concept of mental illness is a myth and is a means by which societal forces can deprive an individual of rights without legal protections. Halleck (1971) has posed significant cjuestions regarding the "double agent" role of the therapist, that is, when the therapist responds to societal pressures for information about a client or accepts a client for therapy at the request of a third party. The question of informed consent to psychotherapy was raised by Noll (1974). Early studies of responses of mental health professionals revealed little agreement on proper courses of action when confronted with these and other ethical problems (e.g., Little & Strecker, 1956), and the issues raised are subject to continuing discussion (Redlich & Mollica, 1976).Concomitant with the discussion of ethical issues has been the increasing involvement of legal scholars in the mental health process. Kittrie (1971) has analyzed the psycholegal ramifications of enforced therapy and suggested the need for legal limitations beyond which therapists in institutions should not go. Attorneys have become active in litigation surrounding such issues as right to treatment, the right not to be treated, involuntary commitment, quality of care, and a host of others (Miller, Dawson, Dix, & Parnas, 1976). Thus, it is becoming increasingly important for mental health professionals to deal with these ethical and legal issues.These influences have caused a reexamination of professional beliefs and practices on the part of mental health service providers. The increasing influence of consumer protection and litigation has challenged traditional approaches. Nowhere, perhaps, have these influences been felt more acutely than in the areas of confidentiality, privilege, and the growing psycholegal issues surrounding the duty of the therapist to warn third parties of pending danger and to report knowledge of certain classes of behavior (e.g., child abuse) to the authorities (Bersoff, 1976;Noll, 1976).
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