Abstract. Software development in distributed teams remains challenging despite rapid technical improvement in tools for communication and collaboration across distance. The challenges stem from geographical, temporal and sociocultural distance and manifest themselves in a variety of difficulties in the development projects. This study has identified a range of difficulties described in the literature of global software development, lacking sufficient solutions. In particular, advice for project managers is lacking. Design science research has been applied to design a model to guide project managers of distributed software teams, based on a practice study and informed by well-known theories. Our work pinpoints the difficulties of handling the vital informal processes in distributed collaboration that are so vulnerable because the distances risk detaining their growth and increasing their decay rate. The research suggest to support and securing these informal processes through explicit and formal means and to ensure management's continuous focus on this effort to succeed.