Governance Patterns in Global Software Engineering: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Over the past decade Global Software Engineering (GSE) has become the norm influenced by several factors such as market evolutions in emerging economies, availability of skilled pool of resources at optimal costs and globalization trends such as mergers and acquisitions. Evidently, market leaders, large businesses as well as niche players in Software Product Engineering have leveraged GSE in several areas such as product development, sustenance, support, testing and professional services. In this context, governance of GSE projects or engagements is a critical factor that provides adequate foundation and support structure to ensure results. This paper discusses three fundamental governance patterns and additional derived patterns observed in a set of GSE projects. Also, this paper presents two case studies and our experiential findings on governance perspective.