An evidence‐based model of distributed software development project management: results from a systematic mapping study

Abstract

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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