Global software project management

1. Global Software Project Management
Presented by
Mr. Manish Tripathi ( I – 15-18-19)
Thakur Institute of Management Studies
&
Research
(Saturday, 17 February 2018)

2. ABOUT ABB
● Allmänna Svenska Elektriska Aktiebolaget (English translation: General
Swedish Electric Company; Swedish abbreviation: ASEA) was a Swedish
industrial company
● ASEA was founded 1883 by Ludvig Fredholm in Västerås as manufacturer of
electrical light and generators
● Brown, Boveri (BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies
● It was founded in Baden, Switzerland, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot
Brown and Walter Boveri
● ABB (ASEA Brown Boveri) is a Swedish-Swiss multinational corporation
headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland founded in 1988
● Operating in robotics, power, heavy electrical equipments, and automation

3. ABOUT ABB
● Revenue: US$33.828 billion (2016)
● Operating income: US$4.191 billion (2016)
● Profit: US$1.899 billion (2016)
● A heritage spanning more than 130 years
● ABB operates in more than 100 countries
● Employs around 135,000 people
● ABB is traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange in Zürich, Nasdaq Stockholm and
the New York Stock Exchange in the United States

6. Global Software Project Management: A Case Study
● Based on a Conference Paper · June 2010
● Authores: Petra Björndal, Karen Smiley, and Prateeti Mohapatra
● Global software development (GSD) is a growing phenomenon in industry
● The ABB Group of companies has a long history of executing globally
distributed development projects
● The paper presents aggregate findings from qualitative interviews with people
across different sites in the organization, and describe how identifying,
measuring, and actively managing GSD-related risks can help project
managers and leaders in planning and executing projects more effectively.
● All data collection was conducted between 26th of June and 11th of
November 2009

7. Challenges in Global Software Project Management
● Geographic separation
● Temporal separation
● Culturally-based misunderstandings
● Language effects
● PEST challenges
● Intellectual property rights
● Communication methods
● Managing Virtual Teams
● Deciding and Controlling International Project Cost
● GSD poses challenges both on management and technical levels

8. The Approach
● Six cases of GSD projects within ABB, and one additional reference GSD
project in a large non-ABB commercial organization
● None of the cases we studied had multi-company integration situations
● The projects were selected for diversity with regard to types of software
developed, geographic distribution patterns, team sizes, number of sites
involved, and development methodology (conventional or agile)
● Collected the data on PM’s experiences and perceptions through interviews
and a questionnaire

9. Data Collection and Analysis
● The study was carried out in four steps:
1) definition of GSD metrics, 2)questionnaires,
3) interviews, 4) analysis of data
● The question set was designed to cover general context of the project (roles
and responsibilities), communication and collaboration, issues perceived, and
experiences gained during specific software activities
● Contacts were sought with projects known to have GSD experience with a
high degree of collaboration distributed over multiple countries and time
zones
● Four of the projects were studied with interviews from a broad perspective
collecting the project managers’ experiences as well as the project teams’
views, three projects were studied with interviews focusing more closely on
the project management layer, carefully examining overall GSD issues

10. Data Collection and Analysis
● In total, 31 interviews were done with members of GSD teams located at
seven sites
● Each semi structured interview lasted for about one and a half hours

11. Project# Time zones Remark
1 2 4.5 hours in
time-zone difference , ABB
2 2 7 hours in time-zone difference, ABB
3 4 Two in the same time zone; maximum
time-zone difference was 11.5 hours, ABB
4 2 7 hours in time-zone
Difference, ABB
5 3 two in the same time zone and the third
4.5 hours away, ABB
6 2 4.5 hours in
time-zone difference, ABB
7 2 same time zone, non - ABB

12. Role Coverage

13. Analysis and Discussion of Findings

14. Common GSD challenges, consequences, and mitigation strategies