Collaboration Strategies for Distributed Teams: A Case Study of CAD Systems Integration

Software development becomes more challenging when teams are geographically distributed. One cause is that certain activities in the development lifecycle are inherently collaborative. This paper presents our experiences applying strategies that improved collaboration on our global team. Our experiences are drawn from a project in which we developed a system to integrate a computer-aided design tool with an online parts library. First, we identify common barriers to collaboration and the challenges they presented to our team. Barriers such as language differences, time zones, and miscommunication hindered our progress by creating challenges such as ambiguity in requirements, misunderstandings of design intent, and rework. Next, we present the strategies we used to overcome these barriers. Our approach led to a successful project with a few detours along the way.