Impacting Global Software Development Through Socialization Activities in Virtual World Environments
Olly Gotel, Vidya Kulkarni, Des Phal, Moniphal Say, Christelle Scharff, Thanwadee T. Sunetnanta · 2008
Abstract. In today’s software industry, development teams are no longer co-located but distributed over locations, and problems associated with different time zones and cultures come into play. To reflect these industry scenarios, and to better prepare computer science students to capitalize upon the opportunities and address the challenges, five institutions distributed across four countries and two continents have been collaborating to investigate models of working in global software development settings. The model for the spring 2008 project emphasized friendly competition between distributed development teams and quality, via the support of coaches and the external feedback of auditors, to increase the likelihood that software suitable to deploy would be developed by the students. A virtual world environment was also used as a socialization tool with the expectation that it would provide support for the needed face-to-face interaction that lacks in distributed teams and so promote additional forms of communication. In this paper, we describe the goals behind investing in socialization and the emerging technologies that can support such activities in global software development projects. We also outline the setting and the results of our particular socialization study. We conclude the paper with reflections on the future use of virtual world environments in global projects of this nature and the resulting implications for practitioners.