Retrospective: An Empirical Study of Speed and Communication in Globally Distributed Software Development
James D. Herbsleb, Audris Mockus · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering · 2025
In this retrospective, we reflect on the motivation, findings, and impact of our 2003 paper. We see evidence of influence in increasing the visibility of the topic of global software development (GSD), the use of version data for software engineering research, and using a mixed methods empirical approach. These topics have all continued to grow in importance in software engineering, as revealed by citation counts, but radical changes in business and technical environments have substantially changed how the challenges of GSD manifest. We see evidence of this in the paper’s “life cycle,” as citation counts grew for its first decade, and declined for its second. We consider this a marker of progress, and a very good thing for the field.