An integration centric approach for the coordination of distributed software development projects

This paper presents an approach for Distributed Software Development (DSD) that is based on two foundations. The first one is an integration centric engineering process, which aims at managing crucial dependencies in DSD projects. The second foundation is a strategy for operationalizing the coordination of the engineering process. The purpose of this strategy is to simultaneously provide global information system support for coordination and achieve common understanding about what should be coordinated and how. The approach has been successfully used at Ericsson, a major supplier of telecommunication systems worldwide, for coordinating extraordinary complex projects developing nodes in the third generation of mobile systems. Although many obstacles have to be addressed, the results indicate that the approach is a viable way to manage DSD during very demanding circumstances.