Better validation in a world-wide development environment

Increasingly software projects are handled in a global and distributed proj ect set-up. Global software development however also challenges traditional techniques of software engineering, such as peer reviews or teamwork. Espe cially validation activities during development, such as inspections need t o be adjusted to achieve results, which are both efficient and effective. E ffective teamwork and coaching of engineers highly contribute towards succe ssful projects. We will in this article evaluate experiences with validatio n activities in a global setting within Alcatel's Switching and Routing bus iness. We will investigate 3 hypotheses related to effects of collocated in spections, intensive coaching, and feature-oriented development teams on gl obally distributed projects. As all these activities mean initial investmen t compared to a standard process with scattered activities, the major valid ation criteria for the 3 hypotheses is cost reduction due to earlier defect detection and less defects introduced. The data is taken from a sample of over 60 international projects of various sizes from which we collected all type of product and process metrics in the past 4 years.