Effort Estimation in Global Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review

Nowadays, software systems are a key factor in the success of many organizations as in most cases they play a central role helping them attain a competitive advantage. However, despite their importance, software systems may be quite costly to develop, so substantially decreasing companies´ profits. In order to tackle this challenge, many organizations look for ways to decrease costs and increase profits by applying new software development approaches, like Global Software Development (GSD). Some aspects of the software project like communication, cooperation and coordination are more challenging in globally distributed than in collocated projects, since language, cultural and time zone differences are factors which can increase the required effort to globally perform a software project. Communication, coordination and cooperation aspects affect directly the effort estimation of a project, which is one of the critical tasks related to the management of a software development project. There are many studies related to effort estimation methods/techniques for colocated projects. However, there are evidences that the colocated approaches do not fit to GSD. So, this paper presents the results of a systematic literature review of effort estimation in the context of GSD, which aimed at help both researchers and practitioners to have a holistic view about the current state of the art regarding effort estimation in the context of GSD. The results suggest that there is room to improve the current state of the art on effort estimation in GSD.