Focus: Section Title Guest Editors’ Introduction

TODAY, WORKING with colleagues in different locations is more common than not, from globally distributed software projects to R&D projects to manifold business processes in companies across all industry sectors. Global software projects, however, have a mixed reputation. Proponents suggest that globalization enables a variety of bene ts, such as cost reduction, shorter time to market, access to a skilled labor pool, and increased innovation.1 Opponents and skeptics, on the other hand, call global software development “the crisis of the decade,”2 warning that the assumed bene ts aren’t for everyone and shouldn’t be taken for granted.3 To understand what makes some global projects synch and others sink, it’s essential to emphasize that global projects have different avors. Not all of them are distributed, for example—nor do they all employ virtual teams. The distinction is in team formation. We might refer to distributed projects as virtual projects because the teams working on them are assembled from people residing in different locations. But these projects might instead have loosely coupled teams in different locations with collocated members. Virtual teams, on the other hand, demonstrate a high level of interdependence and cooperation among team members. Complicating the situation somewhat, globalization can be enabled by offshore outsourcing (subcontracting work to a third party) or offshore insourcing (working with subsidiaries, also known as captive offshoring). This could determine, for example, the amount of control project managers have over teams or team members in remote locations. Figure 1