Strategic Picking

Strategic Picking the right strategy for global development is critical. The secondary issues involve putting the appropriate management teams in place and this is influenced by sociocultural aspects as well. Then comes the strategy for chunking the work and distributing it. This could be driven on the basis of functionality, localization or development stages. Non technical issues dealing with cultural and social differences between geographic locations considerably complicate a distributed development effort. A pleasant working relationship between members of a team is a must if progress is to be guaranteed and we cannot underestimate the effects of understanding and adapting to different cultural makeups. Managing a global software development process has many challenges such as knowledge transfer, quality assurance and configuration management. Knowledge here will take many forms including application knowledge, development standards, technology knowledge and company culture knowledge. KM Technology can considerably ease the pain of sharing

information but must be deployed early and broadly. The factors of language and time figure into the communications challenge. Especially in projects that may need a language specific user interface. Differing

time zones may at first glance appear inconsequential but temporal dispersion does add to logistical challenges such as arranging or a video conference across teams.

Non technical issues dealing with cultural and social differences between geographic locations considerably complicate a distributed development effort. A pleasant working relationship between members of a team is a must if progress is to be guaranteed and we cannot underestimate the effects of understanding and adapting to different cultural makeups.

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