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 behavior 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.