Interaction Patterns among Global Software Development Learning Teams

Abstract

This paper describes a study of the impact of communication behaviors on the performance of global software teams. Using a content analysis technique developed by [10], the researchers first characterized the asynchronous communications among student teams in Panama, Turkey and the US as they worked to complete a global software development project. Cluster analysis was then used to identify groups with similar communication patterns, which is defined as the proportion of time spent on each of the behaviors. Results suggest that particular patterns of communication behaviors are associated with higher performance. More specifically, it appears that communications related to the "contributing" category seem to have the strongest relationship to high performance.