Problems? We All Know We Have Them. Do We Have Solutions Too? A Literature Review on Problems and Their Solutions in Global Software Development

Distribution of development processes has become common as a side effect of globalization. Working in a distributed setting brings challenges inherent to distance. The Software Engineering community has been investigating these challenges for over a decade, and issues regarding communication, coordination, and trust are frequently reported in literature. However, a few studies discuss solutions for these challenges. Frequently, best practices are described in a general context. In this paper we report our findings from a systematic literature review that aimed at identifying reported challenges and the proposed solutions to solve such challenges. In a time that distributed development has established its roots, it is important to move towards solutions to well-known problems. Our report aims to establish a baseline of problems that still need solutions. This baseline brings awareness to the global software engineering community. We finish discussing the implications for furthering the body of knowledge in the field.