Analytical modeling of software development teams in globally distributed projects

Global software engineering is an area of increasing research challenges, in which teams are dispersed in multiple sites collaborating across borders and time zones. In spite of its potential competitive advantages, globally distributed projects must deal with difficulties when distributing resources such as teams with cultural diversities, different skills and experience levels. Both industry and academia demonstrate a special interest in the modeling and prediction, mainly representing systems in order to extract interesting indices, for example, evaluating whether or not a project will succeed. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of analytical modeling techniques in order to predict the outcome of geographically-distributed projects. We focus our attention to the participants interaction and its interplay when it affects team productivity. The models are parametrized considering single-site and multi-site scenarios, varying resources availability, teams expertise and support levels. Performance indices from both scenarios are presented and conclusion indicates possible model extensions.