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.
Agile software development has become increasingly common in software vendor organisations, and their impact on practices and roles is now extending beyond the project level across the entire organisation. In this study, we investigate how a major Australiabased multi-site global software vendor transitioned from a structured to a Scaled Agile approach.We demonstrate how practices and roles in a distributed software vendor evolved over time across the organisation in an on-going process of their global agile transformation. Through this elaboration, we identify three major agile transitions and the contribution of a scaled agile approach in the building of market driven capabilities. We theorised a relationship between increased dynamic capabilities of the firm and a scaled agile transition. Supporting our view, we noted that agile practices and roles across the organisation contributed as expected to improved internal process capability. More surprisingly, they were also found to increase our vendor's ability both to identify and take advantage of opportunities and to innovate in global product and service development and delivery. CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Software creation and management → Software development process management → Software development methods → Agile software development •
Abstract-The DevOps phenomenon is gaining popularity through its ability to support continuous value delivery and ready accommodation of change. However, given the relative immaturity and general confusion about DevOps, a common view of expectations from a DevOps role is lacking. Through investigation of online job advertisements, combined with interviews, we identified key Knowledge Areas, Skills and Capabilities for a DevOps role and their relative importance in New Zealand's job market. Our analysis also revealed the global dimensions and the emerging nature of the DevOps role in GSE projects. This research adds a small advanced economy (New Zealand) perspective to the literature on DevOps job advertisements and should be of value to employers, job seekers, researchers as well educators and policy makers.
large, that endeavors to convey and reinforce computing's social relevance and potential for positive societal impact. Besides the obvious benefit to society, CSG-Ed endeavors to exploit the finding that students' desire to have a positive societal impact is a strong determinant regarding their selection of a major[14]. A side effect of incorporating CSG-Ed activities, particularly in the introductory curriculum, is that it could potentially broaden participation in computing. It is worth noting that this "positive societal impact" is considered an inclusive term: CSG-Ed therefore includes sustainability [57], ICT4D [42], ICT4Peace [44], HFOSS [84], value sensitive design [61] and so on.
Context: The globalisation of activities associated with software development and use has introduced many challenges in practice, and also (therefore) many for research. While the predominant approach to research in software engineering has followed a positivist science model, this approach may be sub-optimal when addressing problems with a dominant social or cultural dimension, such as those frequently encountered when studying work practices in a globally distributed team setting. The investigation of such a team reported in this paper provides one example of an alternative approach to research in a global context, through a longitudinal interpretive field study seeking to understand how global virtual teams mediated the use of technology. The study involved a large collective of faculty and support staff plus student members based in the geographically and temporally distant locations of New Zealand, the United States of America and Sweden. Objective: Our focus in this paper is on the conduct of research in the context of global software activities, and in particular, as applied to the actions and interactions of global virtual teams. We consider the appropriateness of various methodologies and methods in enabling such issues to be addressed. Method: We describe how we undertook a substantial field study of global virtual teams, and highlight how the adopted structuration theory, action research and grounded theory methodologies applied to the analysis of email data, enabled us to deliver effectively against our goals. Results: We believe that the approach taken suited a research context in which situated practices were occurring over time in a highly complex domain, ensuring that our results were both strongly grounded and relevant to practice. It has resulted in the generation of substantive theory and techniques that have been adapted and applied on a pilot basis in further field settings. Conclusion: We conclude that globally distributed teamwork presents a complex context which demands new research approaches, beyond the limited set customarily applied by software engineering researchers. We advocate experimenting with different research methodologies and methods so that we have a more rounded repertoire to address the most important and relevant issues in global software development research, with the forms of rigour that suit the chosen approach.
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