Off-Shore Blackboxing & Global Software Development : En studie av utmaningar och möjligheter med distribuerad systemförvaltning

Sammanfattning: Global Software Development (GSD) is based on a geographical distance where teams are spread throughout the world. The related research have for a long time addressed the challenges presented by geographical distances. GSD is basically a necessity for many businesses to use in order to reduce development costs, reduce production time and to maintain high quality. The study aims to investigate the relationship between the reality of a specific maintenance project. Thus, our research question: How do distributed maintenance teams experience temporal, geographical and socio-cultural distances? To achieve the purpose of the study, we chose to perform a case study of a global consulting company which recently started a new system maintenance project. The data collection was done through interviews and observations at the premises of the consulting company. We have confirmed the previous research and come up with our own contributions to the field. The findings of our thesis provides aspects of communication, coordination and control related to the three distances stated in our research question. A new collective term has also emerged, off-shore blackboxing.