Process variability management in global software development: a case study

Global Software Development (GSD) is set to be the paradigm that will support software industries in the increasingly globalized 21st century. It opens the door to companies from emerging countries to compete for their own gap in the market. It does, however, still bring some challenges with it. It must integrate different cultures, work styles, and work timetables in the same development process. In fact, GSD methodologies do indeed include specific activities to coordinate different work teams, but they fail precisely where any other methodology does: in the need to be truly useful by meeting the distinct cultural requirements of every organization involved, all at the same time. Up to now, process tailoring has been managed through variability mechanisms. Since these successfully merge original structure with cultural assets, they are also useful for adjusting global methodologies so that they suit each particular development context. This paper presents a case study of the use of the Variant-Rich Process paradigm (VRP) to support tailoring in a GSD methodology. It reveals the suitability of the VRP mechanisms, given that they support the two tailoring dimensions a GSD project involves, i.e., they take into account the circumstances of the entire global project, as well as the need to fit the internal characteristics of each organization; furthermore, they save effort in the tailoring process.