Global software development in practice lessons learned

More than a decade ago organizations began to experiment with remotely located software development facilities seeking lower costs and access to skilled resources. This change is having a profound impact not only on marketing and distribution but also on the way products are conceived, designed, constructed, tested, and delivered to customers. The number of organizations distributing their software development processes worldwide keeps increasing. As a result, software development is becoming a multi-site, multicultural and globally distributed undertaking. More recently, attention has turned toward trying to understand the factors that enable multinationals and virtual corporations to operate successfully across geographic and cultural boundaries. Based on these factors, we present lessons learned from case studies in two software development units from multinational organizations located in Brazil.