TY - GEN
T1 - Why replacing legacy systems is so hard in global software development
T2 - 18th ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2015
AU - Matthiesen, Stina
AU - Bjørn, Pernille
PY - 2015/2/28
Y1 - 2015/2/28
N2 - We report on an ethnographic study of an outsourcing global software development (GSD) setup between a Danish IT company and an Indian IT vendor developing a system to replace a legacy system for social services administration in Denmark. Physical distance and GSD collaboration issues tend to be obvious explanations for why GSD tasks fail to reach completion; however, we account for the difficulties within the technical nature of the software system task. We use the framework of information infrastructure to show how replacing a legacy system in governmental information infrastructures includes the work of tracing back to knowledge concerning law, technical specifications, as well as how information infrastructures have dynamically evolved over time. Not easily carried out in a GSD setup is the work around technical tasks that requires careful examination of mundane technical aspects, standards, and bureaucratic forms, as well as the excavation work that keeps the information infrastructure afloat.
AB - We report on an ethnographic study of an outsourcing global software development (GSD) setup between a Danish IT company and an Indian IT vendor developing a system to replace a legacy system for social services administration in Denmark. Physical distance and GSD collaboration issues tend to be obvious explanations for why GSD tasks fail to reach completion; however, we account for the difficulties within the technical nature of the software system task. We use the framework of information infrastructure to show how replacing a legacy system in governmental information infrastructures includes the work of tracing back to knowledge concerning law, technical specifications, as well as how information infrastructures have dynamically evolved over time. Not easily carried out in a GSD setup is the work around technical tasks that requires careful examination of mundane technical aspects, standards, and bureaucratic forms, as well as the excavation work that keeps the information infrastructure afloat.
KW - ethnographic study
KW - excavation work
KW - Global software development (GSD)
KW - information infrastructure
KW - interface integration
KW - legacy systems
KW - outsourcing
KW - system interfaces
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84968877228&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2675133.2675232
DO - 10.1145/2675133.2675232
M3 - Article in proceedings
AN - SCOPUS:84968877228
T3 - CSCW 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
SP - 876
EP - 890
BT - CSCW 2015 - Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.
Y2 - 14 March 2015 through 18 March 2015
ER -