Ilan Oshri - Managing Component-Based Development in Global Teams

Managing Component-Based Development in Global Teams

Julia Kotlarsky and Ilan Oshri

Julia Kotlarsky and Ilan Oshri 2009

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First published 2009 by
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ISBN: 978-0-230-22244-1 hardback

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Globally Distributed Component-Based Development (GD CBD) is expected to become a promising area, as increasing numbers of companies are setting up software development in a globally distributed environment and at the same time are adopting Component-Based Development (CBD) methodologies. This process of globalisation and adoption of CBD methodology has introduced potential benefits as well as new challenges in the management of software projects.

On the one hand, it is expected that adoption of CBD will further facilitate globally distributed development of software products, as happened in industries such as aeronautics, automotive, electronics and computers hardware, where Component-Based (CB) architectures have been successfully used for setting up globally distributed design and production. Within the software industry, it is suggested that components could be developed in parallel independently by teams located in the same building or at remote locations. It has been argued that CBD enables each site to take ownership of particular components and work on them independently without much need for inter-site communication and coordination.

On the other hand, research on co-located CBD projects has reported difficulties associated with the management of CBD projects, such as lack of stable standards, lack of reusable components, and problems related to the granularity and generality of components. In the light of these problems, achieving the true potential of CBD, which is mainly about reusing components, is challenging even in co-located CBD projects. Globally distributed organisations may face the above-mentioned and additional challenges (caused by geographical, time-zone and cultural differences) when adopting the practice of CBD.

Being an emerging area, the management of GD CBD has evolved primarily on an ad hoc basis. We are happy to share with you the insights we have gained in the last eight years regarding the most effective practices companies should apply when organising and managing GD CBD.

Historically the demand for software services has outpaced supply. As we enter the era of e-business, companies are increasingly adopting complex software systems to support their internal and external processes. At the same time, we are also witnessing an exponential increase in the use of embedded software systems. For example, mobile phones, personal organisers and cars are equipped with sophisticated software which communicates over the web. Consequently, the demand for software and software developers is exploding in all parts of the world.

The imbalance between demand and supply is further exacerbated by the high levels of skill and training required for building software. Software engineering organisations have always had trouble meeting the growing demand for high quality software (Shachaf 2008). Although numerous improvements have been introduced to software engineering practices, Brooks (1987) claim that building software will always be hard is now generally accepted. Brooks (1987) listed four unique properties of software that make software development more difficult than other systems engineering disciplines. Software systems are complex, unvisualisable, and are constantly subject to change. Finally, software systems are expected to conform to the continuously changing environment in which they operate. These inherent difficulties of software make software engineering a complex discipline, and consequently, large software development projects are regularly delayed and show huge budget overruns (Willcocks et al. 2002; Wallace and Keil 2004). As a result, highly skilled software engineers and experienced software project managers are scarce and expensive in most regions of the world.

In order to build quality software faster and more cheaply, companies in industrialised countries are turning to globally distributed software development projects.

Emerging countries such as India and China are known to have large pools of highly trained software engineers at relatively low cost. Moving parts of the development process to these emerging countries can not only decrease development costs, but can also provide access to scarce development manpower and resources (Sarker and Sahay 2004; Kotlarsky and Oshri, 2008). Another advantage of global distribution could be reducing project lifecycle by using time-zone differences to organise follow-thesun (or round-the-clock) development (Carmel 1999; Evaristo and van Fenema 1999; Herbsleb and Moitra 2001).

Global distribution of software development has become widespread over the last decade. There are a number of economic and technical drivers that are likely to further accelerate the growth of distributed software development. For economic and financial considerations, many companies are switching to globally distributed development and/or offshore outsourcing of products and services. For instance, in the software and electronics industries offshore outsourcing of development (in the software industry) and manufacturing (in the electronics industry) is very common. Outsourcing of services such as call centres to English-speaking developing countries is becoming increasingly common. Many companies are opening R&D or manufacturing centres in countries where costs are low and yet skills and expertise are available (e.g. India, China). The recent trend towards mergers and acquisitions can also result in globally distributed organisations. Global distribution is also useful whenever a software product needs to be customised for a local market. Proximity to the customer may be necessary in such cases (Carmel 1999). On the technological side, ongoing innovations in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) increase the possibilities to cooperate in a distributed mode.