Does distance still matter?

Abstract

Nowadays, distributed development is common in software development. Besides many advantages, research in the last decade has consistently found that distribution has a negative impact on collaboration in general, and communication delay and time to complete tasks in particular. Adapted processes, practices, and tools are demanded to overcome these challenges.We report on an empirical study of communication structures and delay in IBM's distributed development project Jazz. The Jazz project explicitly focuses on distributed collaboration and has adapted processes and tools to overcome known challenges. We explore the effect of distance on communication and task completion time and use social network analysis to obtain insights about the collaboration in the Jazz project. We discuss our findings in the light of existing literature on distributed collaboration and delays.

Distances between Requirements Engineering and Later Software Development Activities: A Systematic Map

“…For example, computer-based group meetings were found to be more effective for requirements negotiation than face-to-face meetings [13]. Similarly, development environments with computer-based support for collaborative work in combination with best practices were found to contribute to reducing communication delays [35]. These contradicting results might be explained by the effect the applied practices have on the division between formal and informal communication.…”

“…Within GSD, cases where communication is equally strong, or even improved, compared to co-located development have been reported [13,35]. For example, computer-based group meetings were found to be more effective for requirements negotiation than face-to-face meetings [13].…”

“…RE is a communication intense activity and the identified distances between people (see overview in Figure 3) may have an impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of communication and collaboration [1,2,13,34,35,37] and can be a significant cost driver [15]. Within GSD, cases where communication is equally strong, or even improved, compared to co-located development have been reported [13,35].…”

“…Similarly, Wolf et al found no significant delays for geographical distance in a case study. This was believed to be due to practices applied to bridge these distances (collaborative tools, and processes and practices adapted to distributed software teams), but may also be explained by the fact that the delays were quantified as opposed to qualitatively measured as for most other studies [35].…”

Alignment practices affect distances in software development: a theory and a model

“…These types of distance have primarily been researched within the context of global software development (GSD). Even so, there are reported findings from GSD projects where communication was equally strong or even improved compared to co-located development [6] [17]. These contradicting results indicate that there are additional undiscovered factors at play.…”