Towards a Communication Maturity Model for Distributed Software Development

Communication related issues are among the main reasons of the low rate of success in software development, more specifically in distributed projects in which developers are located apart from each other and need to establish virtual relationships to communicate and to collaborate. It is important for a distributed team to be able to communicate properly and in a timely manner. As time goes by and the team gets used to working together and is aware of protocols and working processes, it is expected that communication issues will reduce. Hence, we can say that the communication processes evolve and mature. This paper presents a research under development that aims at developing a Communication Maturity Model for distributed software development inspired in quality maturity models such as the CMMI. The expected model will aim at supporting the management of communication strategies and processes in such software development context.