Communication Management in Global Software

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

Communication Management in Global Software Development Projects Yusmadi Yah Jusoh Dept. of Software Engineering and Information Systems Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [email protected]

Rozi Nor Haizan Nor Dept. of Software Engineering and Information Systems Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [email protected]

Bashar Amir Mahmood Dept. of Software Engineering and Information Systems Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [email protected]

Mohamed Abdullahi Ali Dept. of Software Engineering and Information Systems Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [email protected]

Muhammad Nur Baihaqi Jusoh Dept. of Software Engineering and Information Systems Faculty. of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [email protected]

Mustafa Thamir Wafeeq Dept. of Software Engineering and Information Systems Faculty. of Computer Science and Information Technology Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia [email protected]

are connected through the communication factor to share information, ideas among team members, communication nearness the market, gather different skills in one place, access to a large labor pool [3], reduce the time and acquire high performance [4, 5]. Communication has carried in many ways not just traditional communication media even the social media engagement with managing projects [6].

Abstract—Many organizations that have the global software development (GSD) projects use communication technologies to connect their virtual teams. However, the virtual team faces various challenges and issues in the process of the GSD. One of the significant challenges is obtaining an efficient communication among team members. This study focuses on the communication factors among the virtual teams highlighted in the literature. The communication factors are related to the temporal distances, geographical distances, socio-cultural, access to training, technological problems that hindering communications, the communication within the status of development process, personal communication skills and language differences. The objective of this study is to examine the communication factors and identify the related issues which are commonly occurring between the virtual teams in the global software development. A survey was conducted in different sectors. The findings indicate that some of important points related to the communication factors contribute to the success of the GSD.

Besides the benefits, there are many challenges in term of communication interaction techniques used in GSD such as telecommunication technologies, e-mail messages and video calls, differences in development cost [7], establish effective communication and coordination mechanisms among the distributed teams [8]. The challenges such as lack of communication among geographical distances, different time zone, different languages, the communication with the status of development process, technological problems hindering communication, different socio-cultural, and personal communication skills are studied by [1, 9-12]. These challenges might face particularly by the virtual teams and are not found in the face to face development teams.

Keywords—project management, team communication, communication management, global software development.

I. INTRODUCTION In software development aspect, the global software development (GSD) is a useful practice to manage projects, which has led to use by many organizations to reduce cost, time and increase quality [1, 2]. GSD handled by virtual or descanted teams located in various places, furthermore teams

Challenges in communication are significantly slowing down the overall project progress [13]. There is a significant communication-related difference between projects employing

978-1-5386-3812-5/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 216

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

impact and more complicated on the GSD when the requirements change management (RCM) process included [15].

traditional co-located teams in one location and those using virtual teams [11]. In this paper, we identified the problems or challenges to manage projects within the communication that effect on GSD. We have conducted a survey to investigate the impact of the main communication factors that could be effect on the GSD such as temporal distances, geographical distances, socio-cultural, access to training, personal communication skills and language differences. The survey was distributed among the information system (IS) departments or software professionals in various sectors in Malaysia such as education, manufacturing and, health and insurance in the public and private organizations.

There is not a massive difference between the two teams (the traditional and the virtual teams) on the risk factors (inadequate communication and technological problems hindering communication). An online questionnaire was conducted over 150 experienced IT industry participate. The study indicates that increment of the dependence of GVTs on the communication technologies. Therefore, an adequate knowledge transfer should be in virtual project risk management planning [11]. Table 1 shows the summary of the communication factors that contributes to the GSD projects.

This paper is organized as follows. The following section II summarizes the relevant literature on communication of project management in GSD. The research design and methodology are described in Section III. The key findings and results are presented in Section IV and finally the discussion of the results.

TABLE I. No.

II. RELATED WORK

1

This section reviews the extent literature on GSD to address related problems of communications within the software development industries and studies conducted by the researchers.

2

The factors that have an effect on the choice and victimization of technologies at intervals virtual teams' communication are: time constraints organizational cultures, access to training, information richness, synchronous and asynchronous tools, choosing the right technology for the special case, communication problems and most effective, tools, security issues, e-Ethics. According to the academic review, shows the rank of these factors according to their level of affect [9].

3 4 5

THE RELATED WORKS Related Work Factors

Cultural differences, language problems, time-zone differences, team size, technical problems, lack of trust, lack of sufficient training, and ICT problems. Temporal, socio-cultural distances and geographic, member’s attitude and social communication Cultural differences, language problems, time-zone differences, team size, technical problems, lack of trust, lack of sufficient training, and ICT problems. Geographical, socio-cultural and temporal distances. Inadequate communication and technological problems hindering communication

References

[9]

[4]

[14] [15] [11]

III. METHODOLOGY

A framework on risk factors has been developed, including the factors mentioned in the literature along with the factors identified from the survey results. Finally, factors those were discussed in the proposed framework have affected negatively to communication and caused communication related risks during GSD process [4].

The questionnaire was distributed through a web based survey using Google forms. Provided links of the web through emails and social media such as what’s app and Facebook. The target respondents are among the practitioners who have experience working in project management among various sectors such as education, finance and insurance, health care and social assistance, manufacturing, telecomunication and construction.

In order to manage projects of distributed teams from different geographical areas such as GSD across the world, the organization needs to create a global virtual teams to engaged with this particular work, global virtual teams (GVT) depending on communication, collaboration and exchanging data and information which conceder a major factor that can be effect on.

The survey obtained 155 respondents within two months. The questionnaire was organized into four sections, which include; •

The factors that affecting GVT performance such: cultural differences, communication language problems, time zone differences, team size, technical problem, lack of trust, lack of sufficient training, and ICT problems. The findings indicated that lack of sufficient training is the highest level of effect on global virtual teams’ performance. On the other hand, team size is the lowest level of effect on global virtual teams ‘performance [14]. The communication factor has more

•

217

Company background - general information about company background such as the type of organization, category of the industry, numbers of employee, and models used for the software development. Respondent background - the general information about respondent’s specialization, and experience.

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

• •

Project background - information about project type of recently completed GSD project, duration of development, and the target users. Project communication success factors - the subfactor on the communication success are listed to enquire the opinion from the respondents.

There is 5 rating scale that is totally disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and totally agree. Respondents need to tick only one rating scale of each question. The data collected was analyzed using frequency counting for multiple selection questions and descriptive statistics.

Fig.1: Development of New Application

Most of the IS department in the organization perform system maintenance and support. The result shows that 41.9% perform between 51%-75% on the system maintenance and support and others equivalently did between 25%-50% and 76%-100%. Fig.2 shows the result from the data collected.

IV. ANALYSIS RESULTS The collection of the quantitative data is analyzed and presented with the help of tables, graphs and brief explanations. The survey questionnaire involved 155 respondents from various organizations. A. Company Background Most of the respondents are from Finance and Insurance industry (66 persons, 45.6%), Education (34 persons, 21.9%) and Health Care and Social Assistance Industry (32 persons, 20.9%). The respondents are from various industries such as government, semi-government; private sector and not-forprofit sector (refer Table II). TABLE II. COMPANY BACKGROUND

Fig.2: System Maintenance and Support

The Industry

Frequency

Percentage (%)

Finance and Insurance

66

42.6

Education

34

21.9

Health Care and Social Assistance

32

20.6

Manufacturing

19

12.3

Construction

2

1.3

Telecomunication

2

1.3

Most of IS departments do 51%-75% Customization of packaged software product (35.5%, 55 persons) and 49 respondents (31.6%) respond there is department do 25%-50% customization of packaged software product. Others is doing 76%-100% customization of packaged software product. Most of the IS departments do the customization of packaged software product except IS departments from 4 respondents (2.6% respondents) did not do the activity (Fig. 3).

The respondents need to indicate the contribution (in percentage) of the Information System (IS) Department on the new application in their organization. It is to indicate how the organizations organize their IS department on the project development. Based on Fig.1, it shows that 34.2% of respondents did 25%-50% development of new application. Whereas, the organization that did 51%-75% and 76%-100% of new application development are equal which is 32.9%. Fig.3: Customization of Packaged Software Product

Each of Information System departments has their own Standards/Models of Development. Fig.4 shows number of

218

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

respondents responds their standard/models. Most of respondents use ISO 9000 Family as their standard/models (28.4%, 44 persons).

Fig.5: Respondent's Experience

C. Project Background This part is mainly to know about project that successfully being managed by respondent’s team recently. Most of the respondents do development of new system recently with 38.1% of respondents. Other 34.8% of the respondents do the enhancement of an existing system and the rest do the redesign of an existing system. It is shown in Fig.6.

Fig.4: IS Developments Standards/Models

B. Respondent background Next, we looked at the respondent’s background. Most of the respondents specialize in project management (21.3%, 33 persons), followed by respondents who specialize in system or software analysis (18.7%, 29 persons). TABLE III.

COMPANY BACKGROUND

Organization Industry

Frequency

Percentage (%)

Project Management

33

21.3%

System/Software Analysis

29

18.7%

Programming

25

17.4%

System/Software Design

22

14.2%

Networking

18

11.6%

Testing

13

8.4%

Information Security

9

5.8%

User

4

2.6%

Fig.6: Type of Project

In our survey, we find out that most of the respondents take 7 to 12 months to finish their project with 49% of respondents (76 persons). For 1 to 6 months' project duration, it involves 28.4% of the respondents and the project that take more than one year only 22.6% (Fig. 7).

Data collected is shown in Table 3. Besides, data collected shown that most of the respondents are from fresh year experience (1-2 years) with 32.3% of respondents which means 50 from 155 persons. And the least respondents are from senior with experience more than 10 years (3.2%, 5 persons). Data collected shown in Fig.5.

Fig.7: Duration of the Project

All of systems are develop to meet user demand. User in this context means the clients for the developers/organization.

219

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

•

Fig.8 shows the data collected about respondent’s target user for their project that successfully managed recently. Most of the respondents (51.6%, 80 persons) are develop for external clients which mean different organization. 48.4% of respondents did for in-house clients (same organization).

Good project development is having openness in communication between team members. Table IV shows respondent’s opinion about each sub-factor that supporting communication for a successful project management. Based on first sub-factor, almost half of respondents (49.7%) are agree (41.3% agree, 8.4 totally agree) that communication of project management can be improving by the time constraint in organizational cultures between teamwork. Second sub-factor is socio cultural distances and geographic of teams have observe in the project. 43.9 % agree and 13.5% totally agree if we have observed the socio cultural and geographic between team members that doing Global Software Development (GSD), we have better communication between each other. In other words, we could say we understand each other. There were no language problems of communication among team members, this sub-factor means if there is no different dialect or language that can make different meaning from speaker and listener, the result will show better communication. Only 9.0% totally disagree and 13.5% disagree with this sub-factor. 24.5% seems thinking that is no different if sub-factor exists or not, and the rest is agree with it. Fourth sub-factor is the project has obtained the communication with the status of the development process. By according to the status of development process, if it showing rapid growth means the communication between project management team members are doing great. More than half of respondents are agreed with this sub-factor (58.7%). Access to training of team members was effective is the fifth sub-factor. This has been agreed by 60.6% of respondents. 13.6% of respondents are not agreeing about this sub-factor. It is for sure that effectiveness of accessing the team members training is really helping the communication of Global Software Development. Maybe the 13.6% respondents thinking that would be the disturbance for other team members and by disturbance it will affect their communication.

Fig.8: The User

D. Project Communication Success Factors This section is to capture the respondent opinion on the subfactors that affecting the virtual teams’ communication. The sub-factors are as follows: • the project time constraints and organizational cultures between teamwork are defined, • socio cultural distances and geographic of teams have been observed in the project, • there were no language problems between team members, • the project status was obtained through communications on the status of the development process, • access of the training by the team members was the project status was obtained the communication on the development process effective, • a better communication within cultural differences of the team, • technical problems on the communication are controlled in project, • High-quality project can be reach by good interpersonal sensitivity skills in communication, • express feelings can make a communication delivered precisely, and TABLE IV.

There are 60.6% of the respondents are agreed to the next subfactor which is a better communication within cultural differences of team. By having different cultures in team, actually is an advantage for developing product. Good communication between them will to sensitivity of each culture. By that, it is going towards good communication in Global Software Development. The next sub-factor that helping to achieve better communication in GSD is technical problems of communication controlled in project.

RESPONDENTS’ OPINION ON COMMUNICATION SUB-FACTORS (IN PERCENTGE, %)

Sub-factors The project time constraints and organizational cultures between teamwork are defined Socio cultural distances and geographic of teams have been observed in the project There were no problems on language to communicate among team members The project status was obtained through communications on the status of the development process Access to training of the team members was effective A better communication within cultural differences of team Technical problems of communication controlled in project High-quality project can be reach by good interpersonal sensitivity skills in communication Express feelings can make a communication delivered precisely

220

Totally Disagree 10.3 6.5 9.0 5.8

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

12.9 11.6 13.5 5.8

27.1 24.5 24.5 29.7

41.3 43.9 38.7 44.5

Totally Agree 8.4 13.5 14.2 14.2

6.5 7.1 3.9 9.0 11.6

7.1 13.5 11.6 4.5 6.5

25.8 18.7 31.6 28.4 25.8

40.6 38.7 34.2 40.0 38.1

20.0 21.9 18.7 18.1 18.1

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

Good project development is having openness in communication between team members

Each team members will be communicating using various technologies. If having technical issue in their communication, it may lead to misunderstanding. Only 15.5% of respondents are not agreed and 52.9% of respondents are agreed that technical problem will be some kind of blocker to have better communication. Interpersonal skill is always being important things will be related to the project manager and all team members.

24.5

36.1

18.7

Good communication can lead to a good project management team within global software development. The sub-factors listed are very important which is agreed by 49.6% respondents that represent all project management team in this area of industry. Based on the result, it reflected that the subfactors are certainly helping communication in delivering good project management. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the grant from FRGS (Ref: FRGS/1/2015/ICT04/UPM/02/3) from Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia (MOSTI).

Another good project development is having openness in communication between team members. Hence, Open-minded to have other’s opinions will make the communication smooth and in good condition by everyone in the team. Therefore, any project in GSD will be produce high-quality products. The results show that 79.3% respondents are agreed and 20.7% are disagreed.

REFERENCES [1]

[2]

DISCUSSION

[3]

Generally, responses from respondents were favorable. The findings from the study shows that the geographical distances, different time zone, different languages, the communication with the status of development process, technological problems, different socio-cultural, and personal communication skills have positively affecting on good communication of the GSD. Therefore, all the sub-factors are important to ensure a good project communication success. This is not only for 21.3% of respondents who specialize in Project Managements; it also involves in the GSD including the system analyst, designer, programmer, tester and etc. Even the graph for respondent’s opinions on communication sub-factor skewed to positive side, the reasons behind respondents who disagreed will need a further study, especially by cases to identify what are the reasons of the related sub-factors.

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

VI.

12.3

distributed geographical area among team, individual or even as an organization. Due to the global market and international presence of many companies, there is a need to implement global virtual teams. Many companies are adopting GSD to reduce software development costs and improve quality. The global virtual team members are gradually engaged in globalized business environments across space, time and organizational boundaries via information and communication technologies

High-quality project can be achieved by good interpersonal sensitivity skills in communication. Good interpersonal sensitivity skills will make a good communication and by that it will lead to high quality project. Results show that 40.0% agreed and 18.1% totally agreed with this sub-factor. More precise communication will achieve by expressing feeling. When members are not expressing what they really want, it will put effect on the project. Sometimes they know what is actually right and wrong, but without courage to tell the truth, the project will not be going as high-quality product. It has been agreed by 56.2% of respondents.

V.

8.4

CONCLUSION

[9]

Project management in the context of global software development (GSD) is challenging due to a number of issues. Today the trend is to perform software development via

221

M. Niazi, S. Mahmood, M. Alshayeb, AM. Qureshi, K. Faisal, N. Cerpa, “Toward successful project management in global software development,” Int. J. Proj. Manag, 2016. 34(8): pp. 1553-1567. B. Seerat, Samad. M and Abbas. M, “Software project management in virtual teams” in Science and Information Conference (SAI), 2013. 2013. IEEE. H. Holmstrom, EO. Conchure, PJ. Agerfalk, B. Fitzgerald, “Global software development challenges: A case study on temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distance” in Global Software Engineering, 2006. ICGSE'06. International Conference on. 2006. IEEE. M. Shameem, C. Kumar, and B. Chandra, “Communication related issues in GSD: An exploratory study. in Software, Knowledge, Information Management and Applications (SKIMA)”, 2015 9th International Conference on. 2015. IEEE. A. Castro-Hernández, “Content and temporal analysis of communications to predict task cohesion in software development global teams. in Global Software Engineering Workshops (ICGSEW)”, 2016 IEEE 11th International Conference on. 2016. IEEE. A. Qusef, and K. Ismail, “Social Media in project communications management. in Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT)”, 2016 7th International Conference on. 2016. IEEE. A. Mockus, and J. Herbsleb, “Challenges of global software development. in Software Metrics Symposium”, 2001. METRICS 2001. Proceedings. Seventh International. 2001. IEEE. Y.H. Shah, M. Raza, and S. UlHaq, “Communication issues in GSD”, Int. J. Adv. Sci. Tech., 2012. 40(2012): pp. 69-76. A.Y. Gheni, MA. Jabar, YY. Jusoh, NM. Ali, RH. Abdullah, “Factors for Communication Technologies Selection within Virtual Software Teams”. in Software Engineering Conference (MySEC), 2015 9th Malaysian. 2015. IEEE.

2018 Fourth International Conference on Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

A. Yagüe, J. Garbajosa, J. Díaz, E. González, “An exploratory study in communication in Agile Global Software Development” Computer Standards & Interfaces, 2016. 48: pp. 184-197. A.H. Reed, and L.V. Knight, “Effect of a virtual project team environment on communication-related project risk”, Int. J. Proj. Manag, 2010. 28(5): pp. 422-427. J Portillo-Rodríguez, A. Vizcaíno, M. Piattini, S. Beecham, “Tools used in Global Software Engineering: A systematic mapping review”, Inform.Software. Tech., 2012. 54(7): pp. 663-685. T.Niinimaki, A. Piri, C. Lassenius, “Reflecting the choice and usage of communication tools in gsd projects with media synchronicity theory”, in Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2010 5th IEEE International Conference on. 2010. IEEE. AY. Gheni, YY. Jusoh, MA. Jabar, NM. Ali, “Factors Affecting Global Virtual Teams' Performance in Software Projects” J. Theo. App. Inform. Tech., 2016. 92(1): p. 90. Khan, A.A., S. Basri, and P. Dominc, A proposed framework for communication risks during RCM in GSD. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014. 129: p. 496-503.

222