Integrating geographically distributed development teams through increased product awareness

More and more product development projects involve geographically distributed groups of developers. One major problem among the members of such groups is the long term lack of awareness of the activities in remote sites. In this paper we discuss the importance of awareness in distributed product development projects. We argue that generic services are needed in development environments in order to provide continuous awareness of activities in remote sites. We introduce a product awareness model that puts focus on a shared composite product and the propagation of awareness in it. We describe the design and implementation of this awareness model in the form of an awareness engine called Gossip.