ABSTRACT
The movement toward globally distributed software development has gathered pace in recent years. The geographic distribution of software development projects at Siemens and across other software development organizations, both big and small, reflects this trend. To date, Siemens has executed many software development efforts using distributed teams and understands that there is a large impact of distributing software development on the entire development life cycle, including the management practices (Herbsleb et al., 2005). Globally distributed software development or global software development (GSD) brings with it many pros and cons that if not managed carefully can easily turn any GSD venture into a lossmaking enterprise. One of the more important trade-offs in the course of any GSD project is that between agility and process discipline. This chapter provides a background on GSD, presents some of its challenges, and introduces the need for managing its complexities in an efficient and structured manner so as to better reap the rewards inherent in GSD.
