A Tool for Training Students and Engineers in Global Software Development Practices

Global Software Development (GSD) is an emerging trend in which virtual teams work on the same projects at a distance. Despite the advantages of this shift, the collaboration between distant members becomes more difficult. Team members interact by using collaborative tools, and this collaboration is affected by time, cultural and language differences. These drawbacks lead to the need to train students and software engineers in the new collaborative skills required. These skills can only be trained by involving learners in practical experiences, but this is not always possible since it necessitates collaboration with distant institutions (universities/firms). We have focused our work on the development of a tool with which to train these skills through the use of a virtual training environment for GSD that avoids this difficulty by placing learners in virtual GSD scenarios in which they will develop the skills needed to work on global software projects.