Guidelines for Effective Bridging in Global Software Engineering

Abstract

Globally distributed software engineering involves one or more of geographic, temporal or cultural distances, which empirical studies find have deleterious effects on the efficiency of the software engineering process. There have been some successful examples where one 'bridge' location has facilitated collaboration and coordination across the other locations. Managers might want to use this bridging as a tactic for future projects, even when future collaborations may be composed of very different participants and in different locations and contexts than current successfully bridged teams. However, group behaviour is complicated and establishing an effective bridge is neither a simple nor a straightforward step. We propose a set of guidelines, based on empirical findings, to help managers understand what to expect from the bridging tactic. These include cultural, organizational, individual and temporal factors as well as insights into the costs and benefits of bridging.

Adopting a Social Network Perspective in Global Software Development

“…al. [34] note that "most of the bridges we have found in our research and in the literature are not ones that were developed intentionally as part of organization strategy, but units that have grown out of organizational need, or of the team positioning themselves in this role.". As an example in a study conducted among several distributed networks of people working on requirements engineering, results showed that on average, about one third of the team members were emergent roles [14].…”

“…Finally, the clustering structure is a more common structure that conforms to the known disadvantages and challenges of distributed collaboration. Nevertheless, with the right strategic positioning of the team members and the existence of "bridges" or "stars", these challenges can be surpassed [34].…”

“…This coordination structure has a negative effect on the team awareness, since members of a team don't know their remote colleagues, they don't know who works on which part of the project and they often don't know where to find important information, when it is needed. In order to overcome the difficulties that a cluster coordination brings, literature suggests the positioning of a "bridging" role between the remote teams [34]. This intermediate role is the focus of attention of several studies, described in various terms such as "boundary spanners", "brokers", "liaisons", "gatekeepers" and others.…”

“…Bridging roles are also important within a network because they cover the structural holes that might exist between people within the network, or between sub-groups. Global software collaboration is, by its nature, a situation where structural holes may emerge between groups that are geographically, temporally and cultural distant [34]. Chang & Ehrlich [32] Another role positioning that gains attention in the analysis of distributed collaboration, both in the core-periphery and the cluster coordination pattern, is the "star" which is defined as "the individual who stands in the center of attention" [22].…”

Global Software Development Coordination Strategies - A Vendor Perspective

“…The interdependencies such as each sites goal and objectives that are dependent on the other sites have to be taken into consideration while building bridges [Holmström et.al, 2008]. The bridge teams should match the bridging function and team members must be compatible with the cultures they are interacting [Milewski et al, 2008]. A particular location has to be selected based primarily on the existing or real availability of the experienced staff that can support the staffing requirements [Battin et.al, 2001].…”