Supporting Communication and Cooperation in Global Software Development with Agile Service Networks

Current IT markets exhibit many constraints (e.g. budget, staff shortage, etc.). These constraints force IT companies to increase productivity using globally distributed manpower. Literature shows that global software development (GSD) indeed raises productivity but reduces communication and collaboration between teams. Consequently, the risk of failure increases. To ease communication and collaboration among teams, novel engineering methods must be provided. To address this problem, we propose using Agile Service Networks (ASNs). ASNs are an emergent paradigm in which service oriented applications (network nodes) collaborate through agile and dynamic service interactions (network edges). Agile interaction among ASN nodes, allow mitigating distance (typical of GSD) by dynamically adapting communication and collaboration as needed. Through ASNs, GSD can be seen as a global network of resources (teams, documentation, knowledge, etc.) among which agile interactions allow flexible knowledge exchange and team collaboration. To establish feasibility of our proposal, we investigated how ASNs can support GSD. Based on existing works in the fields of both ASNs and GSD, we mapped GSD challenges on ASNs key features and devised a meta-model showing how ASNs are used to support GSD requirements.