A Method for Work Distribution in Global Software Development

Global Software Development (GSD) has recently evolved and has been embraced by the competitive software industry today. The major attraction of GSD is due to the greater availability of human resources in distributed zones at a low cost and advances in communication technology. However, recent research reveals that expected benefits of GSD are not always realized as predicted since additional costs are often involved for the communication and coordination activities between the dispersed groups. Therefore, the main challenge of GSD today is to minimize the additional costs and maximize the benefits. A proper work distribution mechanism is particularly important to reduce the additional challenges facing GSD. In this paper, we present a method for work distribution to multiple locations. It starts with the identification of work as stages/phases in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and grouping them according to the Software Process Model (SPM) used. A final suggestion for the work distribution is based on multiple criteria such as work dependency, site dependency, site specific and work specific characteristics. The priority given to the criteria depends on the project objective.