Supporting virtual software projects on the Web

A growing share of all software development project work is being done by geographically distributed teams. To satisfy, shorter product design cycles, expert team members for a development project may need to be recruited globally. Yet to avoid extensive travelling or replacement costs, distributed project work is preferred. Current generation software engineering tools and associated systems, processes, and methods were for the most part developed to be used within a single enterprise. Major innovations have lately been introduced to enable groupware applications on the Internet to support global collaboration. However, their deployment for distributed software projects requires further research. In particular, groupware methods must seamlessly be integrated with project and product management systems to make them attractive for industry. We outline the major challenges concerning distributed (virtual) software projects. Based on our experiences with software process modeling and enactment environments, we then propose approaches to solve those challenges.