An empirical study of distributed software maintenance

A large software project may be distributed over multiple sites when the organization believes that there are not enough people to staff a single collocated team. However, previous empirical research in the context of telecommunication organizations has shown that distance may increase cycle time and costs. We report on a large software massive maintenance project in the information systems domain, which in part has been carried out on a single site and in part across multiple sites of the same organization. We performed a comparative postmortem analysis of the two parts. Our results show that, with respect to cycle time and cost no significant differences exist among the distributed and collocated work. Indeed there is a significant difference in communication during the project. This implies that for massive maintenance activities the distribution over multiple sites can be really helpful.