Can Collaborative Software Development Benefit from Synchronous Groupware Functions? Gerardo Canfora*, Filippo Lanubile°, Teresa Mallardo* *Research Centre On Software Technology, University of Sannio Via Traiano, Pal. Ex-Poste - 82100 Benevento, Italy °Department of Computer Science, University of Bari Via Orabona 4 - 70126 Bari, Italy Abstract Large enterprise organizations have software development teams distrib- uted over multiple geographical sites. Because of distance, enterprises face challenges which are similar to those that open source software (OSS) pro- jects have experienced in the past. OSS projects overcame the problem of dis- tance through both development practices and Collaborative Software Devel- opment (CSD) platforms, wholly made up of asynchronous tools. However, generic groupware platforms offer both same-time and different-time options for communication and collaboration. We intend to understand whether distant developers can benefit from syn- chronous functions other than asynchronous functions for cross-sites coopera- tion. As a first step, this paper provides a comparison of CSD platforms and generic groupware with respect to supported functions. As a result we propose the extension of CSD platforms with synchronous functions, as those avail- able in widespread groupware platforms. 1. Introduction Over the last few years, large enterprise organizations have embraced global software development, where software projects are distributed over multiple geographical sites (Herbsleb and Moitra, 2001). Developing software as a team is a challenge but adding physical separation among team members, often sepa- rated by a national boundary, makes it even more challenging. Geographic distance has an impact on all the forms of cooperation within a team: communication, collaboration and coordination (Chaffey, 1998). Com- 1