Understanding lacking trust in global software teams: A multi-case study

Many organizations have turned toward globally distributed software development in their quest for higher-quality software delivered cheaply and quickly. But this kind of development has often been reported as problematic and complex to manage. One of the fundamental factors in determining the success and failure of globally distributed software teams is trust. The aim of our work has therefore been to describe the key factors causing lack of trust, and the main effects of lacking trust in such teams. From studying 4 projects, all located in two different countries, with trust problems we found the key factors to be poor socialization and socio-cultural fit, lack of face-to-face meetings, missing conflict handling and cognitive based trust, increased monitoring and too little communication. The effect of lacking trust was a decrease in productivity, quality, information exchange, feedback and morale among the employees; the monitoring increased and the employees doubted negative feedback from manager.