Christof Ebert: Global Software and It, Wiley, 2012 2
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CHRISTOF EBERT: GLOBAL SOFTWARE AND IT, WILEY, 2012 2 Author: Christof Ebert is managing director at Vector Consulting Services. A trusted advisor for companies around the world, he supports clients to improve product development and product strategy and to manage organizational changes. Dr. Ebert sits on a number of advisory and industry bodies. Over the years he had set up several offshoring sites, performed due diligence assessments and supported numerous companies in improving their global software engineering and IT outsourcing programs. He serves on the executive board of the IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering (www.ICGSE.org) series, and teaches at the University of Stuttgart. Contact him at [email protected] Order Details: Global Software and IT: A Guide to Distributed Development, Projects, and Outsourcing. ISBN: 978-0470636190, 368 pages. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2012. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047063619X.html Pre-order discount: http://bit.ly/cSjZgD Reader feedback on “Global Software and IT”... "Summarizes experiences and guidance, processes and approaches for successfully handling global software development and outsourcing. It offers tons of practical hints and concrete explanations on how to do it better." —Michael Corbett, Chairman of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals "This book stands out as the best source of information on distributed software development. Seldom do we see a book with the concepts completely backed by the experiences and views of the experts in their fields. Software developers and managers benefit from the broad spectrum of topics and companies in the case studies." —S M Balasubramaniyan, Vice President, Wipro Technologies "This book is very well-written, up-to-date and packed with practical advice for every software engineer and manager working on global projects. I think it will become 'the' excellent source for the industry on the subject of global software development". —Bikram Sengupta, Manager, Software and Services Engineering, IBM Research – India "This book provides a superb introduction to global software and IT projects and products. Most useful are the many practical advice summaries that are nicely highlighted with concrete "how-to" in each chapter." —Erran Carmel, American University, USA Excerpt and reprint with permission of Wiley. Copyright: Christof Ebert, 2012 CHRISTOF EBERT: GLOBAL SOFTWARE AND IT, WILEY, 2012 3 Table of Contents Foreword 5 Introduction 6 Part I: Strategy 8 1 Different Business Models 8 2 The Bright Side: Benefits 14 3 The Dark Side: Challenges 17 4 Deciding the Business Model 22 5 Preparing the Business Case 26 Part II: Development 29 6 Requirements Engineering 29 7 Estimation and Planning 33 8 Development Processes 39 9 Practice: Global Software Architecture Development 43 10 Practice: Software Chunks and Distributed Development 49 11 Configuration Management 59 12 Open Source Development 61 13 Quality Control 64 14 Tools and IT Infrastructure 68 15 Practice: Collaborative Development Environments 79 Part III: Management 91 16 Life-Cycle Management 91 17 Supplier Selection and Evaluation 93 18 Supplier Management 96 19 Practice: IT Outsourcing – A Supplier Perspective 100 20 Monitoring Cost, Progress and Performance 108 21 Risk Management 119 22 Practice: Risk Assessment in Globally Distributed Projects 132 23 Intellectual Property and Information Security 139 24 Practice: Global Software Engineering in Avionics 142 25 Practice: Global Software Engineering in Automotive 155 Part IV: People and Teams 168 26 Work Organization and Resource Allocation 168 27 Roles and Responsibilities 175 28 Soft Skills 177 29 Training and Coaching 179 30 Practice: People Factors in Globally Distributed Projects 182 31 Practice: Requirements Engineering in Global Teams 187 32 Practice: Educating Global Software Engineering 196 Part V: Advancing Your Own Business 205 33 Key Take-Aways 205 34 Global Software and IT Rules of Thumb 211 35 The World Remains Flat 214 Appendix 217 Checklist/Template: Getting Started 217 Checklist/Template: Self Assessment 222 Checklist/Template: Risk Management 227 Glossary and Abbreviations 230 Literature 249 Further Information 255 Index 258 Excerpt and reprint with permission of Wiley. Copyright: Christof Ebert, 2012 CHRISTOF EBERT: GLOBAL SOFTWARE AND IT, WILEY, 2012 4 Introduction Things do not change; we change. - Henry David Thoreau Software and IT have gone global at a fast pace. Be it global software engineering, IT outsourcing, or business process outsourcing, growth rates are more than 20 percent per year [IAOP09, USA07]. While the cost advantage and skill pool looks advantageous, global development and outsourcing bears a set of risks that come on top to the regular project risks. Not knowing them and not mitigating means that soon your project belongs to the growing share of failed global endeavors. Global Software and IT summarizes experiences and guidance, processes and approaches for successfully handling global software development and outsourcing. It offers tons of practical hints and concrete explanations of “how to do it better”. Global Software and IT addresses practitioners, namely . Developers and engineers working in global development projects to make their collaboration more effective, be it captive sourcing within a company, providing outsourcing services to clients or engaging into open source development. Software and IT managers on all levels from the individual working in a distributed team to the senior manager who has to decide where to open a new site and what it means to be successful. Project managers and project teams who want to succeed with distributed activities. Product managers and R&D managers taking advantage of globalization. Procurement interested in making sourcing of development partners more effective. Suppliers trying to understand best practices and what needs drive their clients. Global Software and IT provides a framework for global development, covering topics such as managing people in distributed sites, managing a project across locations, mitigating the risk of offshoring, processes for global development, practical outsourcing guidelines, collaboration and communication. It summarizes experiences from companies of different size, organization layout and industries around the globe. It shares the best practices from projects of different type and size that involve several locations in different continents and cultures. Perhaps most relevant even, it explains the means and strategies to survive in a globally dispersed work environment. It is useful for several purposes, such as in providing . Hands-on experiences with opportunities, lessons learned, and risks. Management education and training in companies. Self-learning for students in business and software . Hands-on practical insights for industry practitioners and managers. A course layout for university or in professional (classroom and self-directed) training. And thus helping each single reader to improve his global software activities. When writing the book we decided for readability purposes to only use the male form of pronouns. We are well aware that software and especially global projects is one of the few engineering fields where we find today almost the same number of women as men. We thank you for your understanding. Excerpt and reprint with permission of Wiley. Copyright: Christof Ebert, 2012 CHRISTOF EBERT: GLOBAL SOFTWARE AND IT, WILEY, 2012 5 Global Software and IT addresses practitioners with practical guidance and experiences from companies and projects across the globe and from different application domains. Many hands-on examples are embedded and highlighted in gray color. Practical guidelines and take-aways are marked with a big arrow on the left side. Some topics, such as cultural differences, play a role in all global projects. Others depend on the environment of companies and projects, such as the size of the organization or the type of the developed products. We therefore always provide some “essence” why something is done in a certain way, and which risk is addressed by a method. We recommend “translating” this essence to your own environment, rather than taking a specific solution as the one and only possible. I want to thank IEEE and Wiley for stimulating this book and asking me to write it in this second edition. A book on such a fast evolving topic would be impossible without continuous feedback and learning from colleagues and clients. Special thanks go to Alberto Avritzer, Suttamally Bala, Werner Burger, Daniela Damian, Filippo Lanubile, Audris Mockus, Daniel Paulish, S. Sadagopan, Bikram Sengupta, Andree Zahir and many more for providing insight from their own experiences in global software and IT services. Filippo Lanubile, Rafael Prikladnicki and Aurora Vizcaino deserve thanks for contributing to tools topics. Finally I’d like to thank Dave Gustafson and Dan Paulish for being good and long-time companions while going global. The IEEE conference series ICGSE (International Conference on Global Software Engineering) helped in building a strong research and industry community of smart people who drive knowledge and competence evolution in this fast growing field. I am happy serving its executive committee and look forward towards more structured evolution of this discipline. Global Software and IT is not for free. Often people argue that we are going global because of cheaper labor rates. The route of software and IT