Continuous Improvement Framework for Global Software Development

Overview and Motivation Rapid development of the telecommunication industry progressively introduces new and enhanced functionalities into existing software systems thus increasing the system size and complexity. The software systems of telecommunication equipment become very large software systems where high reliability requirements are even harder to reach. The most common project type for development of such system is globally-distributed projects which complicate critical coordination mechanisms. On the opposite side increase of competition at all levels of the value chain has strong influence on the business success of the telecommunication software production, impacting all three dimensions: time, quality and cost [1]. To reach the business needs, the development organizations are forced to implement continuous improvement programs. In very large organization and especially in globally distributed environment the implementation of continuous improvement programs is full of challenges. In this presentation we will present the main challenges of implementing continuous improvement programs in a global software development. Furthermore, we will present the framework for implementing improvement program in global software development organization and discuss it along with other existing quality management models used in software development. The framework will address the identified challenges. The experiences from an industrial application of the proposed framework will be summarized and presented.