Understanding structures and affordances of extended teams in global software development

Abstract

Growing popularity of Global Software Development (GSD) has resulted in an increasing number of cross-organizational teams that are formed according to Extended Team Model (ETM). There is little known about the structures (work, social, and communication) that may exist in ETM and what affordances those structures provide to support collaboration and coordination. This paper reports a case study that has studied the structures of an ETM in GSD and how those structures provide affordances for dealing with known GSD challenges. This study has revealed that whilst the current structures in the studied team help deal with different GSD challenges, these structures appear to have certain challenges inherent in them and the affordances they provide. We make a few recommendations for improving the current structures to deal with the observed challenges. Our findings are expected to provide insights into the types of structures and associated challenges for implementing ETM in GSD.