Measuring global distance: A survey of distance factors and interventions

Geographic separation, lack of timezone overlap, and cultural differences are widely recognized as factors that impede communication and collaboration of globally distributed software development teams. While much research has been done into how these factors affect communication and collaboration, there needs to be a way of measuring how much effect they have. This research develops a Global Distance Metric that attempts to quantify global distance as the combination of three factors: geographic, temporal, and cultural distance. Thirty researchers and practitioners were asked to rate the degree to which distance factors affect collaboration. The responses were aggregated and used to calibrate a global distance metric. The metric revealed some surprising insights into the perception of global distance among the teams. In particular, pairs of teams had different perceptions of the cultural distance with their peers, with native English speakers perceiving a lower value than non-native speakers.