Title:            Global Software Development - Industry Event - Programme

Venue:         Enterprise Ireland, The Plaza, East Point Business Park, Dublin 3.

Date:           May 11th, 2009

Time:           9:00am

Sponsors:     Enterprise Ireland, Lero

Enterprise Ireland and Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, teamed up again to host another industry event relating to Global Software Development. In March 2008, a similar event - held in Enterprise Ireland’s Sandymount facility - was nearly cancelled due to a severe weather alert. There were no such problems this time around as the sun shone brightly.

The event itself, while adopting the same format, contained an entirely different line-up of speakers. The first presentation was given by the head of Lero’s Practices, Processes and Methods research area, Dr Ita Richardson. Ita’s talk focused on how global software development processes need firstly to be integrated into existing software process standards, such as Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) and the International Organization for Standardization’s  ISO15504. Then these process standards need to be reviewed in the context of the regulated industries, such as medical devices, where organizations such the U.S. Food and Drug Administration insist on traceability throughout the development of products. However, while they insist that the standards applied to hardware and medicines be also applied to software, they have not indicated how this is to be done. Adapting the existing software process standards seems a pragmatic approach to take.

Following Ita, was Dr Gabriela Avram, whose research into the social and cultural aspects of Global Software Development has drawn her attention to the role of collaborative practices such as informal communication, socialisation and cultural mediation. She spoke about the various field sites where she has undertaken research using ethnographic methods. In order to give the audience a better understanding of the kind of problems she focused on, she shared  a number of stories illustrating the role of instant messaging, Skype and social networking applications in day-to-day collaboration between distributed team members. She concluded with a number of recommendations, emphasizing the role of direct and frequent communication between sites, flexibility in organisational practices and cultural mediation.

Finally, Vikas Sahni of Softedge Systems provided the keynote address. This industry counterpoint reinforced what the academic speakers had presented by recounting how Softedge has been successful in its Global Software Developments by starting small and using an agile iterative approach. However, he stressed the importance of always looking ahead to the next iteration when planning the current one. This allows the architecture to develop in a smoother manner. Like Gabriela, Vikas supported all means of communicating, placing particular emphasis on Skype.

In all, 29 people attended the event, an even mix of managers and developers. Lero hopes to host similar events in the future, highlighting research in our other research areas. We won’t be able to guarantee that the weather will be as good though!

The speakers: Dr Gabriela Avram, Dr Ita Richardson, Vikas Sahni