A Systematic Review of Distributed Software Development

Abstract

In last years, software development activity tends to be decentralized, thus expanding greater development efforts towards more attractive zones for organizations. The type of development in which the team members are distributed in remote sites is called distributed software development (DSD). The main advantage of this practice is mainly that of having a greater availability of human resources in decentralized zones with less cost. On the other hand, organizations must face some disadvantages due to the distance that separates the development teams related to project organization, project control and product quality. Coordination becomes more difficult as the software components are sourced from different places, and new processes and tools are needed. This chapter presents a systematic review of the literature related to the problems of DSD with the purpose of obtaining a vision about the solutions proposed up to the present day.