A Risk-driven Model for Work Allocation in Global Software Development Projects
This work addresses the challenge of optimizing work distribution to manage risks and benefits in global software development, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing task allocation methods by incorporating risk analysis.
The authors tackled the problem of allocating work in global software development projects by developing a customizable risk-driven model that suggests task allocation alternatives and analyzes project risks. The model's suggestions were evaluated through interviews with experienced managers in a multinational IT company and found to mostly comply with their retrospective views.
Risks and potential benefits of distributing software development projects globally depend to a large extent on how to allocate work to different development sites and regions. Existing methods in task allocation are likely to omit the relevance of considering a multitude of criteria and the impact of task distribution on risks and potential benefits. To assess risks stemming from specific work distributions and to exploit organization-specific experience, we have developed a customizable risk-driven model. It consists of two main steps: Suggesting a set of task allocation alternatives based on project- and site-specific characteristics and analyzing it with respect to possible project risks stemming from the work distribution. To evaluate the model, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews in a multinational IT company. The results of the evaluation show that the suggestions of the model mostly comply with the retrospective views voiced by the involved experienced managers.