Enabling Global Software Development via Cloud-Based Software Process Enactment

Global software development (GSD) is a software development model where the development effort spans across distributed locations. Although GSD has gained vast popularity due to its economical benefits, it faces various challenges as a result of cultural, temporal and spatial distances. Cloud computing is becoming the norm for consuming computing resources due to its economies of scale. While the potential for using the cloud for GSD has been investigated in the literature, in this paper, we go one step forward and propose a cloudbased software process enactment architecture. This architecture facilitates bridging the spatial and temporal distances and aims at addressing communicational, managerial and technical GSD challenges. We use EXE-SPEM -an extension of SPEM2.0 which supports cloud-based executability of software process models to model software processes. These models are then enacted in the cloud where the type and amount of resources to be used can be configured. We demonstrate our approach using a simple verification process example that we enact in a proof-of-concept implementation of the architecture. © 2015 Newcastle University. Printed and published by Newcastle University, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details Title : Enabling Global Software Development via Cloud-Based Software Process Enactment Authors: Sami Alajrami, Barbara Gallina, Alexander Romanovsky