Towards Global Deployment of Software Engineering Tools

Abstract

Global nature of multinational organizations pose a different set of challenges in an effective adoption of software engineering tools. Software projects are spread across multiple geographies and tools are deployed globally in these organizations. Global tool deployment is often motivated by an attractive enterprise cost of the tool. Moreover, it helps in harmonizing practices across development groups and useful in establishing benchmarks without further normalizations. There are various parameters to drive a successful tool deployment in a global setup. For example, a good roll out plan, knowledge sharing platform, coordination and trust building among the change agents from different geographies, and a good central support. In this paper, we present our experience of a global roll out of a software engineering tool in a large organization. It has been observed that besides tool's features, factors such as knowledge sharing, active feedback, and training plays an important role in an effective tool deployment.