Coordination and Control of Globally Distributed Software Projects

Recently, software development and implementation projects have globalized at a rapid pace. Companies in North America, Europe, and the Far East are beginning to integrate international Information Technology (IT) resources to support operations across the globe. Offshore IT services have become a prevalent strategy to tap into emerging resource bases of countries like India, Phillipines, Eastern Europe. However, global distributedness has introduced a number of gaps: Distance, time zone difference, socio-cultural diversity, differences of infrastructure, and governance differences. These gaps create challenges for the way software projects are coordinated and controlled. This research investigates the impact of gaps on coordination and control modes. It develops these ideas through an extensive theoretical basis and two qualitative case studies to further our understanding of globally distributed software projects, and extend our capability to manage these.