A Decision Support System for Global Software Development

Global Software Development (GSD) research has reached a level of maturity. Paper-based solutions and guidelines are readily available to solve many known distributed software development problems. The large number of recommendations can present a confusing picture to the practitioner. The Global Teaming Model (GTM), captures key global software processes and recommendations by drawing on the large and growing corpus of empirical research on GSD. This paper introduces the Global Teaming Decision Support System (GT-DSS), that is designed to help software managers navigate through the many recommendations in the GSD literature and the GTM. The interactive GT-DSS captures details about the development organization, and tailors GTM practices to fit specific business and organizational needs. A prototype of the GTM-DSS has been evaluated by industry experts in GSD, with favorable results.