Towards a Global Software Development Community Web: Identifying Patterns and Scenarios

Sources of Global Software Development (GSD) information, such as academic literature, often focus on high-level issues rather than on specific problems. Researchers tend to generalize problems and solutions, however, practitioners and instructors frequently need to identify real low-level scenarios and patterns in an effort to study specific problems and their solutions. We propose a method for collecting and defining GSD scenarios and related patterns. Scenarios depicting events that happen in certain GSD contexts associated with communication, coordination are central to this method. In this paper we show how problems and solutions extracted from these events can lead to the definition of patterns. Patterns describe generalized information that can be re-used in similar contexts. To facilitate knowledge sharing, we have integrated this pattern model into a GSD Community Web intended to promote collaboration between industry and academia. News, resources and discussion forums on GSD topics are also available through this website.