Distributed development in an intra-national, intra-organisational context: an experience report

ABSTRACT

This paper reports from a study investigating distributed development in an intra-national and intra-organisational company context. The study gives an insight into issues related to, and strategies for successful distributed development seen in a project at Ericsson Microwave Systems. We conclude that regular, informal communication is the single most important factor for success in the project, with important roles in improving motivation and coordination. The leader's role in setting clear and transparent project priorities, and the use of iterative development methods with regular deliverables between sites, are identified as key elements of success. The context of the study is a relatively undemanding but common distributed development context, and the issues raised and strategies found to be effective are likely to be relevant to broader distributed development enterprises.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.9 Management
          Subjects: Programming teams

General Terms:
Human Factors, Management

Keywords:
communication, coordination, and control in life-cycle activities, distances in development, distributed software development, geographical distance, socio-cultural distance