Communication, Knowledge and Co-ordination Management in Globally Distributed Software Development: Informed by a scientific Software Engineering Case Study

Abstract

With the global distribution of scientific and software engineering skills and with the need to foster multidisciplinary research collaboration across organisations result in teams dispersed separated by time and distance. However to attain the potential benefits of such collaboration, there is a critical need for a better management of communication, knowledge and co-ordination across distributed teams. The importance of these factors is becoming increasingly known to organisations requiring them to develop methods and enabling mechanisms in need for more successful and efficient collaboration outcomes. This paper discusses and emphasises the importance of managing these factors in distributed software engineering projects based on experiences drawn from an international scientific research and software engineering project (ePCRN). It presents their impact on the collaborative process and how they may hinder the progress of the software development process. It also presents the methods and mechanisms used in the project to address some of these factors