GLOB: A global project management readiness framework

Abstract

In global software development (GSD), software is developed by a team of geographically dispersed people. Many organizations that develop projects globally do not evaluate their project management readiness to undertake such projects. The objective of this paper is to propose a global project management readiness framework (GLOB) to help organizations in evaluating and assessing their GSD project management readiness to improve their capabilities in managing GSD projects. To develop GLOB, three systematic literature reviews (SLRs) were conducted. For each SLR, an empirical study was conducted with GSD practitioners to validate the SLR results in a real-world environment. We identified 45 factors that can play a positive or negative role in global project management readiness. In total, 305 best practices were identified for global project management. Based on the findings of the SLRs and empirical studies, GLOB was developed. Two case studies were conducted to evaluate GLOB in a real-world context. The case study results show that GLOB has the potential to measure an organization's project management readiness for global projects. It is hoped that GLOB will provide GSD practitioners with the ability to understand the strengths and weaknesses of current project management processes and to address weak areas. 1 | INTRODUCTION Global software development (GSD) occurs when a team of skilled developers located in different parts of the world collaborate to develop a software. 1,2 GSD enables organizations to take advantage of the benefits of developing the software in different locations in terms of cost, time, and quality. Many clients prefer GSD because outsourcing software from developing countries costs less. 3,4 With GSD, projects can take advantage of a 24-h work schedule due to time differences in the different locations. Furthermore, GSD projects can utilize experienced and skilled resources across the world thus improving the overall project quality. 5 Despite the advantages of GSD, there are also many risks and problems. 6-10 The available literature shows that GSD is still in its infancy, and only a few studies propose solutions to the reported problems. 11 It has been reported that 80% of organizations that used GSD to outsource their software faced major issues 12 and delays. 13-15 Some of these major problems are related to communication, requirements engineering, cultural differences, and different time zones. 6,9,16,17 Communication is a major problem in GSD projects due to language, terminology, and cultural differences. 11 The lack of face-to-face and informal communication may hinder the establishment of relationships and trust between team members. Informal communication in agile processes is considered more useful than formal communication. 18 Informal communication is difficult to achieve if the project is being developed on different sites 19 due to cultural differences, organizational boundaries, and language barriers. 20 Distributed software development is a challenging task as there are no sp...

Software integration model: An assessment tool for global software development vendors

“…Similarly, Niazi et al 8 have proposed a global project management readiness framework (GLOB) to help organizations in evaluating and assessing their GSD project management readiness to improve their capabilities in managing GSD projects. They identified a list of 45 factors and 305 best practices for the development of their proposed GLOB model.…”

“…This geographical dispersion has raised a number of challenges, [20][21][22][23] Like any other field, GSD will also take its time to mature and overcome the temporal, cultural, linguistics, communication, and coordination issues. 8,10,11,13,19 Alongside, the aforementioned non-technical issues, GSD teams also face technical issues, such as problems in the architecture of software components, their development iterations management, configuration management, and integration of components developed by different GSD teams due to inadequate communication and coordination. [24][25][26][27][28] Almost all types and sizes of software are composed of more than one software component or module.…”

“…[3][4][5][6] To meet the current large software business market, the vendors need skilled human resource and high-quality infrastructure to compete in the GSD market. 7,8 The term "global software development" is coined for software development environment with a diversified pool of experts at minimal efforts and cost across the globe with different time zones, to collaborate in the development process using either synchronous/asynchronous communication. 9,10 Some extrusive GSD benefits are listed as follows [11][12][13] :…”

“…To save time and cost for in time completion of software products, the vendors need to purchase “Commercial Of The Shelf” (COTS) or “Open‐Source Software” (OSS) components 3–6 . To meet the current large software business market, the vendors need skilled human resource and high‐quality infrastructure to compete in the GSD market 7,8 . The term “global software development” is coined for software development environment with a diversified pool of experts at minimal efforts and cost across the globe with different time zones, to collaborate in the development process using either synchronous/asynchronous communication 9,10 .…”

“…In GSD, the clients and vendors as well as the development team may be scattered at diverse geographical locations of the globe. This geographical dispersion has raised a number of challenges, 20–23 listed below: Cultures diversity Time zones differences Language diversity Inadequate communication Difficulties in knowledge management Poor contract management Poor relationship management, etc. Like any other field, GSD will also take its time to mature and overcome the temporal, cultural, linguistics, communication, and coordination issues 8,10,11,13,19 . Alongside, the aforementioned non‐technical issues, GSD teams also face technical issues, such as problems in the architecture of software components, their development iterations management, configuration management, and integration of components developed by different GSD teams due to inadequate communication and coordination 24–28 …”