A Comparison of Team Performance Measures for Global Software Development Student Teams

One of the most difficult tasks for global software development researchers is quantifying the performance of groups and students who participate in these distributed projects. There has been much debate about which factors better correlate with team performance and which best describe a successful team. The purpose of this paper is to compare the different approaches that have been used to evaluate the performance of global software learners and show how these techniques can affect research results. Using data from student groups engaged in global software development projects for the past year, the authors apply a number of different assessment methods and show their effects on different performance indicators. Our study suggests that the selection of appropriate measures to evaluate team performance can dramatically affect how one identifies successful teams.