Software Architecture as a Means of Communication in a Globally Distributed Software Development Context

The management and coordination of globally distributed development poses many new challenges, including compensating for informal implicit communication, which is aggravated by heterogeneous social and engineering traditions between development sites. Although much research has gone into identifying challenges and working with practical solutions, such as tools for communication, little research has focused on comparing communication mechanisms in terms of their ability to provide large volumes of rich information in a timely manner. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with eleven practitioners and twenty-eight responses through a web-based questionnaire from three product lines at an international software development organization. This paper assesses the relative importance of ten commonly used communication mechanisms and practices across local and global development sites. The results clearly indicate that some communication mechanisms are more important than others in providing large volumes of rich information in a timely manner. The prevalence of architecture in providing rich information in large volumes for both local and global communication can be clearly observed.