A Systematic Mapping Study of Tools for Distributed Software Development Teams

Context: A wide variety of technologies have been developed to support Global Software Development (GSD). However, the information about the dozens of available solutions is quite diverse and scattered making it quite difficult to have an overview able to identify common trends and unveil research gaps.
Objective: The objective of this research is to systematically identify and classify a comprehensive list of the technologies that have been developed and/or used for supporting GSD teams.
Method: This study has been undertaken as a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS). Our searches identified 1958 papers out of which 182 were found suitable for inclusion in this study.
Results: We have identified 412 technologies reported to be developed and/or used for supporting GSD teams from 182 papers. The identified technologies have been analyzed in order to categorize them using four main classification schemas for providing a framework that can help identify the categories that have attracted significant amount of research and commercial efforts, and the research areas where there are gaps to be filled.
Conclusions: The findings show that whilst commercial and open source solutions are predominantly focused on specialized tools as well as platforms, research effort was concentrated on providing integrated environments, frameworks, and plug-in based solutions. Considering the findings in the context of previously proposed research agendas, some of the key challenges for GSD research (i.e., collaborative tools and innovative knowledge management systems) shows that lots of collaborative technologies have been reported, but knowledge management is being addressed by focusing on supporting awareness, which is being considered as important as the three elements of 3C model (i.e., communication, collaboration, and coordination). We also conclude that future effort in this area should pay more attention to devising solutions which can fulfill several kinds of requirements necessitated by a broader set of challenges being faced by GSD practitioners rather than tackling individual issues.