M. Zahedi, M. Ali Babar, "Role of Social Structures for Cross-Organizational Collaboration in Global Software Development", International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE), 2013 (original) (raw)

— Over the years, the tendency of IT companies, varying from Small-to-Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) to large organizations, towards Global Software Development (GSD) is increasing. While Extended Team Model (ETM) as a type of offshore outsourcing is recently collecting attractions, there is little empirical knowledge about the social structures in ETM and their impact on collaboration. Our study aimed to investigate the role of social structures to support collaboration in an ETM based engagement for GSD. Through a qualitative empirical study of an ETM engagement, we have identified and classified the mechanisms introduced at different levels (i.e., company, team, individual) to support social structures and how the existing social structures nurture collaborative behavior among cross-organizational GSD team. The findings are expected to provide useful insights into the types of social structure supportive mechanisms for ETM in GSD.