A common product life cycle in global software development

The telecommunication market increasingly demands complex solutions involving a combination of products and requiring co-ordinated development in multiple divisions of a company and even across different companies. Such developments present unique challenges to reach adequate product quality goals within budget and delivery time constraints, especially in a company that continuously evolves to adapt to changing market conditions and regularly needs to incorporate new acquisitions. In this contribution, we show how a formal process model plays a key role in meeting these demands. As examples of the application of this model, we discuss a tailorable product life cycle, and, as an example of more detailed process support in this general framework, the federation of Defect Tracking Systems.