A Study of the Impact of Global Software Development in Packaged Software Release Planning

Today’s globalization of software development has its advantages, but also its drawbacks. Software project managers often lead the production of new software versions and their release on the market. This paper analyses the main challenges faced by software product managers in release planning with regard to the adoption of Global Software Development (GSD) practices for developing packaged software. To achieve this objective, two qualitative techniques are used in this study, namely, Focus Group and Delphi Study. The experiment produced two lists, ranking challenges in software release planning. One list was made considering the adoption of GSD practices and the other did not take into account the adoption of these practices. Results show that there are some, apparently solved, challenges for packaged software release planning like “Project monitoring & control” or “Quality management” that become crucial when facing GSD scenarios, while there are other important challenges in traditional software release planning such as “Requirements prioritisation” and “Stakeholders Management” that apparently do not add extra pressure in GSD environments. In sum, GSD is found to be highly influenced by issues concerning personnel and human resources management.