Global Software Teams: The Problem and the Solution

1
Chapter 18

• Global Software Teams The Problem and the
  Solution

2
Basic Issues in Chapter 18

• Software development is complicated by being
  dispersed across national boundaries
• Projects are driven by economics, strategy and
  management that produce global teams
• Technology both drives as well as enables global
  team practice

3
What Makes These Teams SO Hard to Manage?

• Is it something about IT?
• Volatile, complicated, culturally specific?
• Is it something about IT people?
• Challenge oriented, uncommunicative, mobile,
  unconnected to firm?
• Is it something about ITs role in organizations?
• Unclear, underresourced, unrepresented, not
  included in planning, high stress?

4
How Do These Situations Arise?

• Can RISK ANALYSIS help here?
• AP(bad things happening)
• What bad things can occur?
• BP(bad things have bad outcomes)
• What are the implications of these events?
• CCost of bad outcomes
• What costs must we bear for disruption and
  recovery?
• CostABC

5
Bad Things
Team cannot function software cannot be produced
at all
All aspects of team production become uncertain.
Upper management/client lose trust in team

• Team disintegrates
• Team management loses control
• Team produces awful products
• Team cannot sustain products
• Team creates sustaining problems
• Team destroys client

Quality is hard to guarantee when team isnt
functioning coherently
Team doesnt have any long-term presence and
hence cannot maintain products
Product produces problems forever or odor of
project experience lingers beyond project
Product or project experience is so bad that
client cannot function
6
Push-Pull

• Forces Countering Global Teamwork
• Mostly due to distance
• Also culture
• Result makes it harder to manage team, ensure
  quality, keep to design promises

• Forces Empowering Global Teamwork
• Mostly assisted by technology
• Also good management practice on a global basis
• Leadership is important

7
Global Software Teams
Cohesion
8
Group Life Cycle
Actually getting business done effectively
Developing agreed rules for process to meet goals
Putting the group together, learning about
function
Adjusting to one anothers styles, determining
diffs
9
Global Software Teams -- Advice
Encourage lateral communication and
coordination Be more formal, yet more informal,
too Give everyone a 360o view Establish trust
early in the project and foster it
throughout Establish a team memory Be aware of
culture and language
Items in red are especially important in global
software teams
10
Global Software Teams Critique of Advice

• Communication Structure techniques tend to be
  labor intensive and expensive where technology is
  involved
• Formal/informal is important, but very difficult
  to do in practice
• 360-degree view is OK, but events move faster
  than your planning and intentions.

11
Global Software Teams Critique of Advice - 2

• Trust is hard to build, especially across
  cultures, and requires personal commitment,
  travel, presence, risk sharing
• Team memory is good idea
• Culture is a real problem and not easily
  dismissed or taken into account.