Evolving an infrastructure for student global software development projects

Abstract

With the rapid increase in offshore outsourcing of software development, Global Software Development (GSD) has become the need of the hour. Today's information technology, in the form of communication networks and tooling opportunities, provides us with a supposedly ready infrastructure to support GSD. However, selecting an appropriate combination of tools that cross cultural boundaries and account for unique in-country connectivity situations is not a trivial task. In this paper, we describe our experience of evolving an infrastructure for student GSD projects over a period of four years, culminating in an environment to accommodate the needs of five different teams from four globally dispersed universities in countries straddling many technological divides. We suggest that our experience offers lessons that can also support those organizations embarking upon GSD initiatives and with their own infrastructure decisions to make.

GETTING TO GLOBAL YES! - Designing a Distributed Student Collaboration

“…", "What did your distant counterparts do well?"). These questions are variations on the survey questions described in (Topi et al 2010) and (Volkema and Rivers 2008) and the skill set listed in (Govindarajan and Gupta 2001) and (Gotel, Kulkarni and Phal 2009).…”

A System to Support Teaching Global Software Development

“…These multi-institutional projects allow students to learn new types of communication skills and, more importantly, software tools that support the sharing of information. Students enrolled in these courses must learn how to use various online tools to build teams, exchange information, and work on projects together 11 . While there are many examples of online tools and management software to support student projects, there are very few tools that have been extended to the teachers who must schedule these multi-institutional events.…”