Descriptive Analysis of Fear and Distrust in Early Phases of GSD Projects

Abstract

When globally distributed software development (GSD) is understood as knowledge intensive collaborative work, many of the reasons for problems encountered in GSD projects can be traced back to social conditions framing the collaboration between people at onsite and offsite. A total of 59 interviews were conducted in 8 GSD projects of two major software companies located in Finland. As a result of categorization of problems related to group relations in GSD projects, the lack of trust between onsite and offsite and fears of losing jobs at onsite was found as major problems in the early phases of the projects. Our analysis suggests that poorly communicated reasons GSD can cause severe problems in collaboration between people by laying the ground for fears and for distrust between sites. The study contributes to the GSD research by creating a novel empirical description of the linkages between fear and distrust in GSD.

Global software development and collaboration

“…Delayed response to communication is seen as an barrier to developing 'familiarity' among participants, which in turn is seen as an impediment to developing trust [32,49]. Fear about the future, of jobs and roles, was seen to erode trust as well [32,42,54]: on-site teams in expensive countries, fearful of their job security when off-site teams were added in less expensive locations, tended to mistrust their off-site colleagues as well as their own management's motives [54].…”

“…The lack of informal face-to-face meetings means team members have less opportunity to form personal relationships that improve trust among individuals [54]. Delayed response to communication is seen as an barrier to developing 'familiarity' among participants, which in turn is seen as an impediment to developing trust [32,49].…”

“…Face-to-face communication provides visual cues as well as highly interactive conversation, which improves understanding [62]. Team members develop personal relationships, which improves trust as well as awareness [22,32,42,54].…”

“…As Piri and colleagues observed, "... on-site people felt repeatedly uninformed about how the off-site was doing with their tasks. Because of weak trust, this caused general skepticism towards the working morale and commitment of the off-site people" [54] Organization, Process, and Management Global software development introduces organizational challenges beyond distance and cultural differences. Distribution development may split the groups with decisionmaking and project-execution power, and the group with the knowledge of the stakeholder needs [3].…”

Software Product Transfers: Lessons Learned from a Case Study

“…Since transfers are often associated with fear and uncertainty about employees' future, it has been noted that this might lead to a lack of interpersonal trust between people at onsite and offsite [15].…”