The Impact of Global Work Distribution on Software Development Project Teams

Florida International University, Miami FL

Investigators

Abstract

The intent of the project is to examine the impact of global or geographical distributedness on the coordination, control and reward systems in global software development project teams. Thus the primary resarch question addressed in the proposed research is: how does the distribution of project work across geographically, often globally, distributed work-sites impact the use and effectiveness of the coordination, control and reward systems in these project teams. The exploratory nature of the proposed work drives a combination of intensive qualitative research methods, including onsite observation, examination of project documentation, and in-depth interviews with project managers, project leaders, project members and other stakeholders at the various distributed sites. The PIs will also work with local informants and academics to help elicit and interpret the findings at each location. A theory of the management of globally distributed projects and its associated empirical case data will be immediately useful, and is likely to contain generalizable knowledge for research and practice in the management of global software projects, a major undertaking both in the US and in organizations around the world. With the shift to global software projects, increasing interest in this area is anticipated, along with increasing need for well-founded theory. It is expected that the interviews will help to clarify project-specific team dynamics and dimensions of project management, which will be utilized to help refine and structure a subsequent theoretical framework and a design for a broader study. The subsequent work will depend upon the grounded theory developed in the present exploratory, empirical exploration.