Awareness Support in Global Software Development: A Systematic Review Based on the 3C Collaboration Model

The developers' physical distribution in Global Software Development (GSD) imposes challenges related to awareness support during collaboration. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the literature that describes studies that improve awareness support in a GSD scenario, identifying which of the dimensions of the 3C model, namely communication, coordination, and cooperation, are supported by these studies. Results indicate that coordination is far the most explored dimension, while awareness support in communication is very poorly studied. The research also identified a high number of tools introduced in the GSD domain and some new research opportunities.

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