Performance and quality aspects of virtual software enterprises

High performance organization concepts are applicable to software development and necessary to meet the business goals in a globalized software market. Therefore it is necessary for individual software companies to cooperate with other organizations to stay competitive. In this case, these companies interact in a holonic network which is the basic structure of a Virtual Software Enterprise and have to contribute their core competencies. The companies have to be able to trust in the ability of the processes of other companies to meet the predicted performance and quality goals. As a consequence, different quality management processes have to be established. As the individual companies are locally distributed they need good information and communication technologies to work together. Groupware systems can help to implement a Virtual Software Enterprise.