A Reference Model for Global Software Development: Findings from a Case Study

The purpose of this paper is to present a reference model for global software development, based on the results found in a case study conducted in two software development units from multinational organizations located in Brazil. A preliminary description of this model was originally published in 2004. In this paper, we present the reference model in detail, improving the description and discussing the factors that enable multinationals corporations to operate successfully across geographic and cultural boundaries. At the end, we also discuss a preliminary evaluation of the reference model usage.