Skills and abilities for working in a global software development team: a competence model Javier Saldaña-Ramos* ,† , Ana Sanz-Esteban, Javier García and Antonio Amescua Computer Science Department, Carlos III University of Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad, 30, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain ABSTRACT Nowadays, it is common to develop software development projects collaboratively among team members or organizations in different geographical locations. These teams, known as global software development (GSD) teams, allow organizations to save costs as well as have available highly qualified personnel. This kind of team is different from traditional teams, so it is necessary for team members to develop other essential competences to work efficiently in a global context. Unfortunately, there is no well-defined competence model that allows organizations to assess personnel competences and establish the relevant training program that allows them to work efficiently in such teams. This work defines and implements, in four GSD teams, a competence model specifically designed to address challenges that people face when they work in a GSD team. This competence model has been defined considering tasks a GSD team have to carry out, bodies of knowledge, and existing competence models for the software engineering profiles and the authors’ experience working in such teams. As a result of the implementation process, it was confirmed that the competence model is a key factor for human capital improvement. When personnel have these competences, team and individual efficiency and product quality increase, and delays in delivering products decrease. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 20 December 2012; Accepted 20 December 2012 KEY WORDS: competences; competence model; global software development; GSD; global software development teams; Global IT Professionals 1. INTRODUCTION Globalization has resulted in a substantial increase in outsourcing in different industrial and service sectors [1]. Outsourcing of software activities (development, test, maintenance, programming, and incidence management) is essential to maintaining the required levels of competitiveness and productivity in large software engineering projects [2, 3]. This requires the creation of multidisciplinary teams composed of people working as a single team in the same software development project but in different locations; this is called global software development (GSD) team. Many organizations have implemented GSD and have found that GSD teams are highly complex [1]. This complexity arises from four main challenges they face. First, lack of common understanding of team goals makes team members feel isolated, so they are reluctant to collaborate and share knowledge and work together [4]. Second, difficulties in communication among different team members who are geographically distributed [5]. Third, differences among individual management mechanisms and the associated skills create problems and bottlenecks in project execution [6]. Fourth, ineffective *Correspondence to: Javier Saldaña-Ramos, Computer Science Department, Carlos III University of Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad, 30, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain. † E-mail: jsaldana@inf.uc3m.es Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE: EVOLUTION AND PROCESS J. Softw. Evol. and Proc. 2014; 26:329–338 Published online 25 February 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/smr.1588