Este trabalho apresenta um modelo de dinâmica de desenvolvimento distribuído de software, cujo objetivo é representar a realidade e os aspectos de ambientes de DDS (Desenvolvimento distribuído de software), a fim de torná-los observáveis e descritíveis qualitativa e quantitativamente. Um modelo preliminar foi elaborado a partir da revisão bibliográfica e de um caso de experimentação desenvolvido por LErario et al (2004). Para a construção e validação deste modelo, a metodologia de estudo de múltiplos casos foi aplicada em diversas organizações que desenvolvem software de maneira distribuída. Ao modelo preliminar foram adicionados estados e transições significantes para a dinâmica do desenvolvimento distribuído de software, originando então o M3DS (Modelo de Dinâmica de Desenvolvimento Distribuído de Software). Duas versões do M3DS são apresentadas. Uma versão construída sobre uma máquina de estados, cujo objetivo é representar apenas a transições entre os estados. Outra versão equivalente, porém mais formal, é apresentada no formato de redes de Petri, na qual é possível visualizar a dependência entre transições e mudanças de estado. Com este modelo, é possível compreender o funcionamento de um projeto distribuído e auxiliar na eficácia da gestão da rede de produção, além de auxiliar as demais entidades e pessoas envolvidas a obterem um posicionamento na rede mais preciso. O M3DS pode, também, auxiliar a detecção proativa de problemas originados a partir do desenvolvimento a distância. Os resultados apresentados neste trabalho respondem a questão de como as organizações desenvolvedoras de software produzem software de maneira distribuída. A riginalidade da pesquisa centra-se na construção de um modelo de dinâmica do desenvolvimento distribuído elaborado com os dados levantados a partir de seis estudos de casos. / This work presents a dynamic model of distributed development of software, whose objective is to represent the reality and the aspects of DDS environments, in order to turn them qualitatively and quantitatively observable. A preliminary model was elaborated from the bibliographical revision and an experimentation case developed by L\'Erario et al (2004). The construction and validation of this model used the methodology multiple cases study in several organizations that develop software in a distributed way. After this, states and transitions were added in the dynamics model of the distributed development of software creating the M3DS. (Dynamics Model of Distributed Development of Software). Two versions of M3DS are presented. A version built on a state machine whose objective is demonstrating the transitions among the states. Another version equivalent, however more formal, it is presented in the format of Petri nets. The second version makes possible to visualize the dependence between transitions and state changes. With this model it is possible to understand the operation of a distributed project, aiding in the effectiveness of the manager of the network production and people can obtain a precise positioning in network. Besides, M3DS can also aid the proactive detection of problems originated from the development at the distance. The results presented in this work answer the question: how the development software organizations produce software in a distributed way. The originality of the research is the construction of a model of dynamics of the distributed development elaborated from data of six cases studies.

Este trabalho apresenta um modelo de dinâmica de desenvolvimento distribuído de software, cujo objetivo é representar a realidade e os aspectos de ambientes de DDS (Desenvolvimento distribuído de software), a fim de torná-los observáveis e descritíveis qualitativa e quantitativamente. Um modelo preliminar foi elaborado a partir da revisão bibliográfica e de um caso de experimentação desenvolvido por LErario et al (2004). Para a construção e validação deste modelo, a metodologia de estudo de múltiplos casos foi aplicada em diversas organizações que desenvolvem software de maneira distribuída. Ao modelo preliminar foram adicionados estados e transições significantes para a dinâmica do desenvolvimento distribuído de software, originando então o M3DS (Modelo de Dinâmica de Desenvolvimento Distribuído de Software). Duas versões do M3DS são apresentadas. Uma versão construída sobre uma máquina de estados, cujo objetivo é representar apenas a transições entre os estados. Outra versão equivalente, porém mais formal, é apresentada no formato de redes de Petri, na qual é possível visualizar a dependência entre transições e mudanças de estado. Com este modelo, é possível compreender o funcionamento de um projeto distribuído e auxiliar na eficácia da gestão da rede de produção, além de auxiliar as demais entidades e pessoas envolvidas a obterem um posicionamento na rede mais preciso. O M3DS pode, também, auxiliar a detecção proativa de problemas originados a partir do desenvolvimento a distância. Os resultados apresentados neste trabalho respondem a questão de como as organizações desenvolvedoras de software produzem software de maneira distribuída. A riginalidade da pesquisa centra-se na construção de um modelo de dinâmica do desenvolvimento distribuído elaborado com os dados levantados a partir de seis estudos de casos. / This work presents a dynamic model of distributed development of software, whose objective is to represent the reality and the aspects of DDS environments, in order to turn them qualitatively and quantitatively observable. A preliminary model was elaborated from the bibliographical revision and an experimentation case developed by L\'Erario et al (2004). The construction and validation of this model used the methodology multiple cases study in several organizations that develop software in a distributed way. After this, states and transitions were added in the dynamics model of the distributed development of software creating the M3DS. (Dynamics Model of Distributed Development of Software). Two versions of M3DS are presented. A version built on a state machine whose objective is demonstrating the transitions among the states. Another version equivalent, however more formal, it is presented in the format of Petri nets. The second version makes possible to visualize the dependence between transitions and state changes. With this model it is possible to understand the operation of a distributed project, aiding in the effectiveness of the manager of the network production and people can obtain a precise positioning in network. Besides, M3DS can also aid the proactive detection of problems originated from the development at the distance. The results presented in this work answer the question: how the development software organizations produce software in a distributed way. The originality of the research is the construction of a model of dynamics of the distributed development elaborated from data of six cases studies.

Context: There is an overwhelming prevalence of companies developing software in global software development (GSD) contexts. The existing body of knowledge, however, falls short of providing comprehensive empirical evidence on the implication of GSD contexts on software quality for evolving software systems. Therefore there is limited evidence to support practitioners that need to make informed decisions about ongoing or future GSD projects. Objective: This thesis work seeks to explore changes in quality, as well as to gather confounding factors that influence quality, for software systems that evolve in GSD contexts. Method: The research work in this thesis includes empirical work that was performed through exploratory case studies. This involved analysis of quantitative data consisting of defects as an indicator for quality, and measures that capture software evolution, and qualitative data from company documentations, interviews, focus group meetings, and questionnaires. An extensive literature review was also performed to gather information that was used to support the empirical investigations. Results: Offshoring software development work, to a location that has employees with limited or no prior experience with the software product, as observed in software transfers, can have a negative impact on quality. Engaging in long periods of distributed development with an offshore site and eventually handing over all responsibilities to the offshore site can be an alternative to software transfers. This approach can alleviate a negative effect on quality. Finally, the studies highlight the importance of taking into account the GSD context when investigating quality for software that is developed in globally distributed environments. This helps with making valid inferences about the development settings in GSD projects in relation to quality. Conclusion: The empirical work presented in this thesis can be useful input for practitioners that are planning to develop software in globally distributed environments. For example, the insights on confounding factors or mitigation practices that are linked to quality in the empirical studies can be used as input to support decision-making processes when planning similar GSD projects. Consequently, lessons learned from the empirical investigations were used to formulate a method, GSD-QuID, for investigating quality using defects for evolving systems. The method is expected to help researchers avoid making incorrect inferences about the implications of GSD contexts on quality for evolving software systems, when using defects as a quality indicator. This in turn will benefit practitioners that need the information to make informed decisions for software that is developed in similar circumstances.

Agile software development methods are characterized by developer’s empowerment through self-organization, incremental requirements and constant knowledge sharing. Despite some effort to elaborate how successfully agile methods can be applied in co-located development teams, little is known on how the same is done when the development teams are distributed. Our research focus is to uncover factors that influence the successful application of agile methods in distributed development teams using a software development company as our case study. With three distributed teams applying different agile methods, we conducted focused ethnography alongside interviews to comprehend what and how various factors under distributed development teams influence successful agile methods application. It seems, all that matters is team structure, team spirit, effective communication, product requirements, and knowledge sharing. The team structure has more influence than other factors and therefore our suggestions for successful application of agile methods in distributed software development is to focus on the development team, above all factors. The analysis shows that the development methods themselves have little to do with the successful application of agile methods in distributed software development teams.

Globalisation has come as a double-edged blade for information technology (IT) companies; providing growth opportunities and yet posing many challenges. Software development is moving from a monolithic model to a distributed approach, where many entities and organisations are involved in the development process. Risk management an important area to deal with all the kinds of technical and social issues within companies planning and programming schedules, and this new way of working requires more attention to be paid to the temporal, socio-cultural and control aspects than before. Multinational companies like IBM have begun to consider how to address the distributed nature of its projects across the globe. With outlets across the globe, the company finds various people of different cultures, languages and ethics working on a single and bigger IT projects from different locations. Other IT companies are facing the same problems, despite there being many kinds of approaches available to handle risk management in large scale IT companies. IBM commissioned the Distributed Risk Management Process (DRiMaP) model as a suitable solution. This model focused on the collaborative and on-going control aspects, and paid attention to the need for risk managers, project managers and management to include risk management into all phases of projects and the business cycle. The authors of the DRiMaP model did not subject it to extensive testing. This research sets out to evaluate, improve and extend the model process and thereby develop a new and dynamic approach to distributed information systems development. To do this, this research compares and contrasts the model with other risk management approaches. An Evolutionary Model is developed, and this is subjected to empirical testing through a hybrid constructive research approach. A survey is used to draw out the observations of project participants, a structured interview gathered the opinions of project experts, a software tool was developed to implement the model, and SysML and Monte Carlo methods were applied to this to simulate the functioning of the model. The Evolutionary Model was found to partially address the shortcomings of the DRiMaP model, and to provide a valuable platform for the development of an enterprise risk management solution.

O Estado do Amazonas tem realizado investimentos em educação através da oferta de ensino superior em tecnologia para seus municípios, como alternativa para fomentar o desenvolvimento regional. Porém, de forma complementar, é necessário promover condições para que essas comunidades possam ter acesso a um mercado de trabalho e colocar em prática o conhecimento adquirido, sem que para isso necessitem migrar para outros centros mais desenvolvidos. Este trabalho de pesquisa apresenta uma proposta de inclusão do estado do Amazonas como agente colaborador em projetos de desenvolvimento global de software, através da criação de um conjunto de recomendações para guiar empreendedores no investimento desta solução. O método inclui a coleta de informações sobre as características particulares dos municípios do Estado do Amazonas utilizando técnicas de elicitação de requisitos com foco em engenharia de sistemas, e o estabelecimento de relação entre os problemas regionais e os principais problemas enfrentados por equipes que atuam com desenvolvimento global de software. A partir dessa relação, são geradas recomendações voltadas para capacitação de recursos humanos, investimentos em infraestrutura tecnológica e física local, oferecendo assim uma fonte alternativa de sustentabilidade ao desenvolvimento econômico da região amazônica. / Amazonas State has invested in education by offering higher education in technology for its cities, as an alternative to foster regional development. However, it is necessary to promote conditions for these communities to have access to a labor market and put into practice the acquired knowledge, without the need to migrate to other more developed cities. This work presents a proposal to inclusion of State of Amazonas as a collaborator agent in global software development projects, by establishing a set of recommendations to guide entrepreneurs in the investment of this solution. The method includes collecting information about the particular characteristics of Amazonas cities using requirements elicitation techniques with focus on systems engineering, and the establishment of relationship between the regional problems and the main issues faced by teams working with global software development. From this relationship, the recommendations are generated focused on human resources training, investments in the local physical and technological infrastructure, thus providing an alternative source of sustainability to economic development of Amazonas.

O Estado do Amazonas tem realizado investimentos em educação através da oferta de ensino superior em tecnologia para seus municípios, como alternativa para fomentar o desenvolvimento regional. Porém, de forma complementar, é necessário promover condições para que essas comunidades possam ter acesso a um mercado de trabalho e colocar em prática o conhecimento adquirido, sem que para isso necessitem migrar para outros centros mais desenvolvidos. Este trabalho de pesquisa apresenta uma proposta de inclusão do estado do Amazonas como agente colaborador em projetos de desenvolvimento global de software, através da criação de um conjunto de recomendações para guiar empreendedores no investimento desta solução. O método inclui a coleta de informações sobre as características particulares dos municípios do Estado do Amazonas utilizando técnicas de elicitação de requisitos com foco em engenharia de sistemas, e o estabelecimento de relação entre os problemas regionais e os principais problemas enfrentados por equipes que atuam com desenvolvimento global de software. A partir dessa relação, são geradas recomendações voltadas para capacitação de recursos humanos, investimentos em infraestrutura tecnológica e física local, oferecendo assim uma fonte alternativa de sustentabilidade ao desenvolvimento econômico da região amazônica. / Amazonas State has invested in education by offering higher education in technology for its cities, as an alternative to foster regional development. However, it is necessary to promote conditions for these communities to have access to a labor market and put into practice the acquired knowledge, without the need to migrate to other more developed cities. This work presents a proposal to inclusion of State of Amazonas as a collaborator agent in global software development projects, by establishing a set of recommendations to guide entrepreneurs in the investment of this solution. The method includes collecting information about the particular characteristics of Amazonas cities using requirements elicitation techniques with focus on systems engineering, and the establishment of relationship between the regional problems and the main issues faced by teams working with global software development. From this relationship, the recommendations are generated focused on human resources training, investments in the local physical and technological infrastructure, thus providing an alternative source of sustainability to economic development of Amazonas.

An organizational strategy to develop software has appeared in the market. Organizations release software source code open and hope to attract volunteers to improve their software, forming what we call an open source project. Examples of organizations that have used this strategy include IBM (Eclipse), SAP (Netweaver) and Mozilla (Thunderbird). Moreover, thousands of these projects have been created as a consequence of the growing amount of software source code released by individuals. This expressive phenomenon deserves attention for its sudden appearance, newness and usefulness to public and private organizations. To explain the dynamics of open source projects, this research theoretically identified and empirically analyzed a construct – attractiveness – found crucial to them due to its influence on how they are populated and operate, subsequently impacting the qualities of the software produced and of the support provided. Both attractiveness' causes and consequences were put under scrutiny, as well as its indicators. On the side of the consequences, it was theoretically proposed and empirically tested whether the attractiveness of these projects affects their levels of activeness, efficiency, likelihood of task completion, and time for task completion, though not linearly, as task complexity could moderate the relationships between them. Also, it was argued at the theoretical level that activeness, efficiency, likelihood of task completion, and time for task completion mediate the relationship between attractiveness and software/support quality. On the side of attractiveness' causes, it was proposed and tested that five open software projects' characteristics (license type, intended audience, type of project and project’s life-cycle stage) impact attractiveness directly. Additionally, these projects' characteristics were argued to influence projects' levels of activeness, efficiency, likelihood of task completion, and time for task completion (and so an empirical evaluation of their associations was performed). The empirical tests of all these relationships between constructs were carried out using Structural Equation Modeling with Maximum Likelihood on three samples of over 4,600 projects each, collected from the largest repository of open source software, Sourceforge.net (a repeated cross-sectional approach). The results confirmed the importance of attractiveness, suggesting a direct influence on projects' dynamics, as opposed to the moderated-by-task complexity indirect paths first proposed. Furthermore, all four projects' characteristics studied were found to significantly influence projects' attractiveness, activeness, efficiency, likelihood of task completion, and time for task completion (with the exception of license type and time for task completion). Besides providing a statistical test of these propositions, this study discovered the direction of the influence of each project characteristic on projects' attractiveness, activeness, efficiency, likelihood of task completion and time for task completion. Lastly, conclusions, limitations, and future directions are discussed based on these findings.

In order for a software development team to be successful, cost effective and perform effectively the team needs to coordinate and communicate sufficiently in order to compensate for the obstacles that a distributed team face. The focus of this report is to observe a distributed team as they try to overcome the obstacles that a distributed team face when it comes to coordination and collaboration. The team is being observed as they try to overcome those obstacles while working on a project for a client in another country. Methods, processes and tools are introduced in order for the team to become a self-organizing distributed team that works agile and effective. With the team being observed throughout the course of the project and the literature review on the subject, this report will analyze the team and the methods used in order to come to a conclusion on what enables a distributed team to become a self-organizing team that works agile and effective in a international market. There are obstacles that a distributed self-organizing team face. With efficient communication methods and tools for coordination the team can become a strong self-organizing team that works agile and productive.

Context. Distributed software development teams frequently faced several issues from communication, co-ordination and control aspects. Teams are facing these issues because between teams there is socio-cultural distance, geographical distance and temporal diatance. So, the purpose of the study is to find out the acts when distributed Scrum teams face the problems. Objectives. There are several numbers of common GSD challenges or issues exist; such as, face to face meetings difficult, increase co-ordination costs and difficult to convey vision & strategy so on. The purpose of this study was to search, additional frequently occurred Global Software Development (GSD) issues or challenges. As well as, to find out the mitigation strategies, those practices by the Scrum practitioners (distributed software environment) in the industry. Methods. In this study, systematic literature review and scientific interview with distributed Scrum practitioners were conducted for empirical validation. One of the purpose for interview was to get challenges & mitigations from distributed Scrum practitioners point of view; as well as, verifying the literature review’s outcomes. Basically, we have extended the Hossain, Babar et al.’s [1] literature review and followed the similar procedures. Research papers were selected from the following sources, such as, IEEEXplore, ACM Digital library, Google Scholar, Compendex EI, Wiley InterSciene, Elsevier Science Direct, AIS eLibrary, SpringerLink. In addition, interviews were conducted from the persons who have at least six months working experience in a distributed Scrum team. Moreover, to analyze the interviews thematic analysis method has been followed. Results. Three additional common GSD challenges and four new mitigation strategies are found. Among the additional issues, one of them is communication issues (i.e. lack of trust/teamness or interpersonal relationship) and rest of them are co-ordination issues (i.e. lack domain knowledge/ lack of visibility and skill difference and technical issues). However, additional mitigation strategies are synchronizing works, preparation meeting, training and work status monitoring. Finally, frequently faced GSD issues are mapped with mitigation strategies by basing on the results obtained from SLR and interviews. Conclusions. Finally, we have got three additional GSD issues (such as, lack of trust/ teamness/ interpersonal relationship, lack of visibility/ lack of knowledge and difference in skills & technical issues) with the existing twelve common communication, co-ordination and control issues. The mitigation techniques (such as, synchronized works hour, ICT mediated synchronous communication and visit so on) for the common GSD issues has been found out and validated by Scrum practitioners. Among the existing issues, several of them use new mitigation strategies, those were gotten from practitioners. Moreover, for the two existing control issues (i.e. management of project artifacts may be subject to delays; managers must adapt to local regulations) lessening or mitigation techniques have been addressed by interviewees. This study was carried out to get the common GSD issues & mitigations from literature and distributed Scrum practitioners.