The six Centripetal Forces For Successful Global Software Teams

1
The six Centripetal Forces For Successful Global
Software Teams

• Telecommunications Infrastructure
• Product Architecture
• Team Building
• Development Methodology
• Management Techniques
• Collaboration Technologies

2
Telecommunications Infrastructure

• Telecomm Infrastructure
• Analogous to the foundation of a house
• A global software team requires a
• Reliable network
• High bandwidth network

3
Telecommunications Infrastructure

• Invest in reliable, high bandwidth connections to
  all desktops at all sites
• Establish consistent hardware and software
  platforms
• Excellent telecommunications infrastructure does
  not negate the need for travel.

4
Collaborative technologies

• Collaborative technologies promises to collapse
  distance and bring us closer to our colleague far
  away.
• Team wall
• Well run dispersed team will be using 10-20
  types of collaborative technology all at once.

Time
Same
Different
E-mail Voice-mail Video-mail Groupware
platform Calendar/schedule Discussion list
Video-conference Audio-conference E-chart E-whiteb
oard
Different
Place
Same
meetingware

• Generic Collaborative technology

5
Collaborative technologies

• Formal and Informal Communications
• Formal help mitigate the inevitable
  communication breakdown that occur as a result of
  distance and culture
• Informal collaborative technology needs to
  emulate the co-located work environment as much
  as possible, with its informal mechanisms for
  resolving problems (finding, sorting, processing,
  and retrieving the information that members need
  to solve a problem)
• Research Result of a study on developers
• 2/3 of all messages were quite brief less than
  5 minutes
• Each day, on average, each developer sent 6
  messages and received 16.
• Conclusion
• For developers, coordination and knowledge
  sharing is conducted by informal lateral networks
• For dispersed team there is a need to encourage a
  great deal of informal communications

6
Collaborative Technologies

• Collaborative Technology supports Deliberation
  and Workflow
• Deliberation The classic problem-solving
  activities of identifying the problem, evaluating
  the solutions, selecting a desired plan, and
  monitoring its implementation.
• Workflow routing objects from one person to
  another in need of work, review, or authorization.

7
Collaborative technologies

• Objectives of Generic Collaborative Technology
• 1. Serves as a team memory knowledge center
• The team store and shares information and
  knowledge across a work unit
• 2. Provides each team member a 360 view
• All members at all sites are informed regarding
  task, status, people, and other dynamic team
  information (transparency)
• 3. Forster a sense of community
• The glue creates and maintains interpersonal
  relationships

8
Collaborative Technologies

• Selected Collaborative Technologies and Their Use
• E-mail
• Is the most important collaborate technology
• when we had trouble with e-mail we went insane
• Phone to email use ration 120
• Time zone differences
• Developers are comfortable with e-mail is part of
  the professional culture in where in the world
• Help to understand language differences
• Facilitates lateral communication
  communications that does not go through a formal
  chain of authority.

9
Collaborative Technologies

• Groupware Platforms
• E-mail, Document repositories, discussion lists,
  Calendars, and Workflow automation.
• The industry leader is Lotus Notes
• Group Calendar/ Group Scheduler
• An excellent tool to inform dispersed team
  members of different holidays, milestones,
  events, and meetings.
• Time zones differences, different work hours, and
  summertime clock changes.
• Discussion Lists
• Audio-conferencing
• Electronic Whiteboard

10
Collaborative Technologies

• Video-conferencing
• Promises
• To reduce the need for travel
• Accelerate the process of reaching decisions
• Reduces development cycles by accelerating
  problem resolution
• Promote creative thinking
• Foster bounding between people and building the
  sense of teamness
• Limitation
• Technical limitations
• Cost issues
• Quality problems
• Synchronicity issues (same time)
• Behavioral norms
• Are collaborative technologies culturally neutral?

11
Collaborative Technologies

• Cultural Overlay of Collaborative Technology
• In High-context Cultures
• Much of the communication is outside the body of
  the message in greeting style, gestures,
  posture, etc
• Forces users toward a high information mode in
  their message, away from the ambiguous contextual
  cues
• The most culturally neutral collaborative
  technology is email even then it is not neutral.
• Example
• American and Scandinavian decision making norms
  vs. Decision making in Japan

12
Collaborative Technologies to Support Software
Engineering CT-SE

• Objectives
• 1. Serves as a team memory knowledge center
• The team store and shares information and
  knowledge across a work unit
• 2. Provides each team member a 360 view
• All members at all sites are informed regarding
  task, status, people, and other dynamic team
  information (transparency)
• 3. Reduces duplication of effort
• Software engineers need to share many types of
  project knowledge, otherwise they may end up
  fixing the same bug or working on software
  components that are out of date as result of
  others work.
• 4. Supports coordination activities and workflow
• Need to support team members self-managing tasks
  via electronic lateral coordination and via
  electronic workflow procedures.
• Support Quality Assurance
• Bug tracking, version control, requirement
  tracking, are essential to maintaining quality
  level.

13
Collaborative Technologies to Support Software
Engineering CT-SE

• CT-SE Functions
• Software configuration management (SCM)
• As a control and enforcement mechanism, it
  establishes formalism used to control processes,
  set the rules, and structure the workflow within
  a team
• As a coordination mechanism, it is an effective
  way to create up-front dialogue among the
  dispersed sites.
• Project status
• Notification services
• Project scheduling and tasking
• CASE and process management
• Programming tools
• Bugs and change tracking
• Team memory and knowledge center