Padrões de evolução na prática de desenvolvimento distribuído de software em ambientes de internal offshoring: um modelo de capacidade

The Software Engineering (SE) community has witnessed a significant change in the way software projects have been developed in the last years. Software project teams have become geographically distributed and the term Distributed Software Development (DSD) is frequently used in industry. To embark on a DSD journey, a company usually defines a strategy based on a DSD business model. The two main models in a global development context include offshore outsourcing (contracting services with an external company) and internal offshoring (contracting with a wholly owned subsidiary). The goal of this research was to understand and to identify patterns in the evolution of practices of organizations involved in internal offshoring, in order to further knowledge about DSD practices. This understanding is also useful for companies starting DSD operations. These companies can benefit from this knowledge which describes practices adopted by other organizations in the past. The result of this research is a capability model that describes patterns of evolution in the practice of distributed software development activities within and among several subsidiaries owned by an organization in the internal offshoring model. This model is organized in three dimensions: capability levels, capability areas (people, project, portfolio and subsidiary) and capability attributes. To develop this model, we have used a qualitative retrospective study, based on Yin’s Case Study approach [154], with qualitative and quantitative data collection instruments.