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SUMMARYThis paper tackles the need for universities and practitioners to train their students and engineers in the new challenges that global software development entails, which are principally related to communication, collaboration and cultural differences. Teaching the necessary skills requires practical experience. However, training in educational environments is difficult, and some challenging issues must still be confronted. We have focused our work on the development of a virtual training environment that can simulate global software development scenarios involving virtual agents (VAs) from different cultures. The VAs interact with learners, who use typical communication tools to solve predefined problems. This environment considers common problems caused by distance and cultural differences when using English as a means of communication. It allows learners to train at any time, because the VAs are always available, and it also permits them to play different roles in the various stages of the project. In this paper, we depict the design and development of the tool, as well as an initial evaluation.

Abstract-Sources of Global Software Development (GSD) information, such as academic literature, often focus on highlevel issues rather than on specific problems. Researchers tend to generalize problems and solutions; however, practitioners and instructors frequently need to identify real low-level scenarios and patterns in an effort to study specific problems and their solutions.We propose a method for collecting and defining GSD scenarios and related patterns. Scenarios depicting events that happen in certain GSD contexts associated with communication, coordination are central to this method. In this paper we show how problems and solutions extracted from these events can lead to the definition of patterns. Patterns describe generalized information that can be re-used in similar contexts.To facilitate knowledge sharing, we have integrated this pattern model into a GSD Community Web intended to promote collaboration between industry and academia. News, resources and discussion forums on GSD topics are also available through this website.

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From recent decades, the phenomenon of globalization is affecting the business model of companies, evolving into a global market that seeks to reduce costs, increase productivity and competitive advantage. The companies engaged in software development are no strangers to this phenomenon, and also being adapted to develop the software in a distributed way at different development teams scattered around the world. This is known as Global Software Development (GSD). This software development paradigm introduces a number of advantages for companies that follow it, but also introduces a number of difficulties and challenges associated with geographical, temporal and socio-cultural distances. One of the major difficulties appears in the Knowledge and Decisions Management as in GSD information comes from many different sources, which makes its management, storage and reuse very complicated. In order to mitigate some of these challenges, we have developed a tool to support the decisions management made in software projects, in the context of global development. Therefore, the system enables the creation, storage, retrieval and transmission of decisions tackled in a software project, carried out in a delocalized way. In addition, the tool allows project managers manage the information of software projects and the most important value is that it also provides techniques to reuse the decisions taken in previous projects into new projects with similar characteristics.

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Simulation has been applied in several Software Engineering fields, and is shown to be a useful method in industrial training. As part of our research work, we have used simulation to provide training in Global Software Development (GSD). We have developed a platform to strengthen GSD skills by simulating realistic settings in which learners interact with Virtual Agents of differing cultures. Thus, learners will experience multi-cultural problems and will develop specific GSD communication skills.The development of these skills must, however, be accurately assessed, bearing in mind that the training is aimed at learners with different characteristics and skills. In this paper we present an assessment process based on educational theory adapted to our simulation-based training environment. Methods to minimize the instructors' effort and tailor the assessment to specific training needs are proposed. The assessment process has been evaluated by 34 potential users. Results indicate that the assessment method yields meaningful results and proof of learning. Also that automated assessment can be achieved with minimal intervention from the instructor. Though tailored for GSD, this method could be applied to other domains, in both industry and academia.