C2M – a communication maturity model for distributed software development

• Ano de defesa: 2014
• Autor(a) principal: FARIAS JUNIOR, Ivaldir Honório
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco
• Palavras-chave em Português: DSD; Communication; Project; Maturity model; Software development; DDS; Comunicação; Projeto; Modelo de maturidade; Desenvolvimento de software
• Link de acesso: https://repositorio.ufpe.br/handle/123456789/12140

Nowadays, software teams are often organized in a distributed way, that is, team members are located in different places, with the distance varying from the level of cities, states or countries. This distributed configuration promoted the creation of a business strategy called Distributed Software Development (DSD). Nowadays, the number of companies adhering to the DSD strategy is much more significant when compared to few years ago. Companies aim for quality and productivity gains and the redution of development costs. For those reasons, DSD has increased interest of Software Engineering researchers over the last years. The geographic distribution of the teams has created several challenges to the development process and to the management of software projects. Among these challenges, communication can be highlighted as one of the most critical since it is necessary to support all and every activity during the development life cycle. Communication becomes critical as the traditional communication channels (e.g., face-to-face meetings, unplanned discussions, and non-verbal communication) become limited and substituted by technologic media (e.g., videoconferences, e-mails, and instant messengers). Given this context, this thesis aimed to develop a model to software teams to improve the maturity in of communication processes distributed projects. To propose this maturity model, I conducted an ad-hoc review of literature followed by two systematic reviews of literature and a qualitative study. I then proposed an initial version of the model and next conducted two focus groups (qualitative study) to preliminarily evaluate the model. Insights from this study were used to generate a new version of the model. Next, I conducted semi-structured interviews to evaluate the new version of the model with experts. Therefore, the main contribution of this research is a maturity model for communication that aims to establish good communication practices in DSD to maximize the success of a DSD project. My work contributes also to the still incipient body of knowledge about communication in the DSD area. This understanding is useful not only to further studies in the academy but also to software companies that are starting DSD operations. They can benefit from the knowledge consolidated in the model and use it to guide the definition of their communication processes in such distributed settings.