Elicitation of Communication Inherent Risks in Distributed Software Development

The lack of risk management, communication and understanding of the requirements are actually the main factors related to the low rate of success in software development, more specifically in distributed projects given the characteristics of this type of development. Considering distributed software projects, the main goal of this paper is to show communication inherent risks empirically identified in such type of project, and the strategies and recommendations adopted to mitigate them. For example, we found that to solve misunderstandings that may occur due to the cultural diversity and language we must encourage frequent communication. This frequent communication does not only increases the communication effectiveness, but also develops the cohesion among the distributed teams, resulting in an improvement of the informal communication and establishment of the confidence among members of the distributed team. These findings were obtained from an exploratory empirical qualitative research that collected interview data from project leaders and managers from several software projects from distinct companies. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the influence of communication process in DSD. It also contributes to the industrial practice so that they can use the results to improve the communication management, minimizing potential problems.