Coordinating distributed software development : a resource relationships perspective on analyzing the spatial effects

As more software development organizations are increasingly distributing their operations spatially, information systems development researchers are taking perspectives such as transactions costs and resource dependency to explain the effects of spatial distribution on coordination. This paper argues that these perspectives are limited because they do not address all the key relationships between software development resources in a unified and systemic manner. The interactions between people, information, and technology, which are the key software development resources, are characterized by four key relationships – interdependencies, uncertainties, conflicts, and technology representations. Based on the premise that spatial distribution of the resources exposes their relationships to direct environmental stimuli, the paper proposes a complementary resource relationships perspective to explain the spatial effects on the dynamics of coordination. An empirical example of software development distributed between sites in USA and Republic of Ireland is used to illustrate these issues. Analyzing the effects of spatial distribution in terms of resource relationships leads to a more systemic, in-depth and phenomenological understanding of the dynamics of coordination. Implications of this perspective for the analysis of coordination in distributed software development are discussed.