Global software development: building a research community

While the field of global software development (GSD) remains in its relative infancy, a group of GSD researchers are on the brink of building a stronger research community that will be able to collectively address many of the current challenges in the field. This paper details emerging issues in the GSD community while discussing contributions made at the latest GSD workshop held at ICSE 2004. These issues include: the need for community building and increased collaboration between researchers, the importance of more systematic application and documentation of research techniques, and the opportunity to build defined models and theories, and, in doing so, define the state of the practice. Brief summaries of workshop papers are incorporated, along with discussions of the topics addressed during the workshop. These topics include: Feasibility of GSD, Strategies for Success of GSD, and Research Methods and Challenges in GSD.