factors relating to the project in question. More and
more, however, this is not the case. Distributing development to low cost countries has become a cost-saving strategy for many organizations Siemens is no different. It is not clear what the
impact of such an approach has on the bottom line. While the hourly development cost may be reduced extra effort is likely to be spent on project management, architectural design, requirements engineering, and so forth. SCR is currently in the process of codifying past
experience in the form of questionnaires, checklists, processes, and other decision aids to assist in the successful application of global software design, and organizational patterns. Engineering rules of thumb are used to plan projects, specify the
size of software components, the division of responsibilities between a central product management team and remote component development teams, metrics, tools, and operational
procedures. The experimental projects are used as case studies to further support the identification of best practices.
We feel that we have a good start in understanding some of the issues related to successfully managing a global software development project. We now need to further substantiate, refine, and transfer our approach to the
Siemens operating companies.