A software process model for follow the sun development

• Ano de defesa: 2014
• Autor(a) principal: Kroll, Josiane
• Orientador(a): Audy, Jorge Luis Nicolas
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação
• Departamento: Faculdade de Informática
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: INFORMÁTICA; ENGENHARIA DE SOFTWARE
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS EXATAS E DA TERRA::CIENCIA DA COMPUTACAO
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/6278

Many companies have conducted Global Software Development projects to benefit from cheaper, faster and better software systems, products and services development. Companies also want to take advantage of time, expertise and talent pools, wherever they may be located in the world. Companies restructure their IT area by extending operations to offshore software development centers. Thus, Follow the Sun development is seen as a potential software development strategy for these companies. Follow the Sun can help with reducing the software development life cycle duration or time-to-market. However, while Follow the Sun concept looks promising in theory, it appears to be difficult to put into practice. Many software companies have tried to implement FTS, but have abandoned it after a while because of this difficulty to put it into practice. The lack of software practices and processes to close the gap between theory and practice is observed as the main barrier to the FTS evolution in Software Engineering and in the software industry. Thus, the goal of this thesis is to develop a software process model for Follow the Sun adoption in Global Software Development projects. The work was divided into three research phases: Exploratory, Development, and Evaluation and Evolution. In the Exploratory phase, best practices from the literature and lessons learned from a case study were identified for FTS development. From these results, a preliminary FTS software process model was built in the Development phase. A design validation method and an expert panel were conducted to evaluate the preliminary model in the Evaluation and Evolution phase. As a result of this process, the FTS-SPM: Follow the Sun Software Process Model has been proposed. The FTS-SPM comprises of six sub-processes and twenty-one best practices. It adoption contributes in increasing the probability of companies successfully implementing Follow the Sun and coping with the different challenges of Global Software Development.