The Research Trend on Global Software Development from 1999 to 2011: the Latent Semantic Analysis Approach

Given that research in the Global Software Development (GSD) area has increased over the last decade, and is beginning to mature, this paper surveyed hundreds of GSD studies and tried to obtain a consolidated view of the areas witnessing the highest concentration of research and areas receiving scant attention in the Information Systems (IS) discipline. After careful selection, 83 research articles remained in the study sample database due to their desired characteristics: behavioral study in the IS discipline, and publication between the year of 1999 to 2011. We reviewed these articles and conducted an objective data analysis by using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) approach. The research results show that there are 5 major research themes in the GSD area: virtue team, knowledge management, control, trust and risk. We also further streamlined these 5 themes to 3C (coordination, control and communication) research stream model. The consolidated view of GSD studies helps identify trends and patterns in this research area. This study also recommends the future research topics in the GSD area.