An Architecture for Creating Simulators for Training Global Software Development

The need for universities to provide their students with theoretical lessons and practical training in GSD has led to the development of new training schemes. Most of these consist of involving distant students from different cultures in the development of software projects in order to allow them to confront similar problems to those that occur in real environments. This, however, is not always possible since it requires a great deal of coordination among various universities. We propose to avoid these problems by using a simulator-trainer with virtual agents which will permit users to work at any time. The virtual agents will induce users to confront the most classical problems in GSD. In order to construct this simulator, we propose an architecture which has different modules to support cultural, language and communication problems. This paper describes this architecture and how to use it, along with the means employed to evaluate it.