Project overview

This research project focuses on distributed software development in Finnish companies. Distributed software development projects are challenging and in the future the amount of this kind of projects will increase. To keep up with the international competition Finnish companies must create new practices to manage these challenging projects. Even internationally there is only little research available on successful practices. The aim of this project is to improve existing practices and create new ones for successful completion of distributed software development projects. The project concentrates on six essential areas: software development processes, communication and collaboration practices, IT-tool support, practices for building and maintaining trust, effects of culture, and managing distributed projects.

The goal of this research project can be summarized as follows:

“To improve and develop practices and processes for successfully managing distributed software development projects in the Finnish software industry”

We have identified six areas (work packages) where there is an opportunity and need for improved knowledge creation and subsequent sharing with other industry players. The areas to be studied include:

• WP#1: Software development processes
• WP#2: Communication and collaboration practices
• WP#3: IT tool support
• WP#4: Trust building and maintenance practices
• WP#5: Impact of culture
• WP#6: Management and governance

All these work packages pose considerable challenges for research and practice, and have the potential to deliver innovative solutions that may strongly affect the ability to increase the competitiveness of the Finnish software industry.

Goal: To study the suitability of different software development processes for different types of distributed software development projects.

• Different project types need different kinds of processes (i.e. projects in stable vs. in turbulent environments)
• Do iterative and incremental development provide a good fit for distributed projects? How can these processes be applied to improve communication?
• Are agile methods (i.e. Scrum and XP) successful in distributed projects? How should they be applied?

Goal: To study what kind of communication and collaboration practices are suitable for different types and phases of distributed software development projects and how these practices could be applied effectively.

• Communication is often the most serious problem in distributed projects
• Who should communicate with whom? When?
• How to improve problem solving?
• How to create transparency?
• How to monitor progress?

Goal: To study what kind of IT tools are suitable for different types of distributed software development projects and how these tools should be used to support collaboration and communication practices

• The real problem is how to use available technology to support distributed development effectively –

instead of the development of specific new tools

Goal: To study what kind of practices for building and maintaining trust are suitable for different types and phases of distributed software development projects and how these practices could be applied in practice

• Successful collaboration depends on the trust that develops between team members
• Hard to build – easy to lose; Even harder to regain once lost
• Key reason trust is lost: failure to meet expectations

Goal: To investigate how culture affects software development processes, communication and collaboration practices, use of IT tools, trust building and management and governance choices.

• Culture has different levels: national, organizational, religious, group or professional, individual, etc.
• How do different levels affect the above issues differently?
• How can this be used as a source of synergy?

Goal: To study what kind of management and governance principles (i.e., intra team structure as well as coordination structure across teams; how are the managers hierarchically connected to all the teams involved and at what geographical distance; granularity of management (milestone size) and coordination types (black box, transparent box, etc); ownership structure (contract, subsidiary, etc)) are suitable for different types and phases of distributed software development projects, therefore combining the knowledge created in WP’s#1-5 to deliver an understanding of how the different practices and tools studied can be used effectively.

To gain a deep understanding of the challenges and successful practices the research uses a qualitative multiple case study approach that is complemented with action research. In action research researchers and client organizations collaborate to solve a problem/problems set by the client and at the same time contribute to the research.