During FTS development, each team member works normal working hours pertaining to his/her time zone. At the end of each working day shift, the
work-in-progress follows to another team member located in a different time zone. When a team finishes its working day shift in one site, another team localized in another site takes the work and starts another working day shift [3]. For each 24 hour period, there are two or more shifts [4].
However, while the FTS concept looks promising in theory, it appears to be difficult in practice [5]. According to Carmel et al. [6], FTS is difficult and uncommon because production teams are
sequentially handing off work-in-progress (unfinished objects) from site to site. This transfer of work-in-progress between sites is called handoff.
Handoffs require a large coordination,
communication and collaboration effort. Furthermore, handoffs must be fast and efficient in order to reduce the development cycle duration [3]. FTS efficiency is determined by both the quality of knowledge transfer and its duration [6]. Handoff coordination difficulties can negatively affect team productivity and consequently will not result in benefits for the project [7]. In addition,
misunderstandings may also lead to re-work [6].
In this study, we present an experience report describing the development and management of handoffs for a FTS software project. Following FTS rules described by Carmel and Espinosa [3], handoffs were performed at the beginning and at the end of each working day shift at each production site. We collected data about these handoffs, which are presented and discussed in this paper.
The main contribution of this study is the identification of challenges faced by FTS teams when conducting handoffs and the solution applied to minimize them. In our conclusions, we also highlight management elements to support the efficiency of handoffs.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the main concepts discussed in this study. Section 3 presents the related work. Section 4 describes the research method utilized in this study. In section 5, we present the
obtained results. In section 6, we discuss these results. Finally, section 7 provides the conclusions.