Technological advances have enabled increases in the size, distribution, and complexity of software engineering (SE) projects, changing the traditional context to one of diverse organizations, locations, times, languages, cultures, government regulations, and technologies. These changes complicate roles, communication, coordination, interactions, and management of project activities. The authors assert the evolution to global software engineering (GSE) presents methodological challenges to practice and qualitative research data collection that are not fully understood.

The authors review the challenges and the exacerbation of the challenges by GSE, and identify new challenges to qualitative GSE research. Based on experience collecting data on several research projects and on qualitative research studies from the literature, strategies for addressing these challenges are suggested. However, the strategies focus on people and cultural diversity, largely neglecting commonality enabled by international standards, common SE principles, process models, paradigms, and programming languages.

The authors present a strong argument for empirical studies of GSE and the recognition of ethnographic diversity challenges and opportunities. The paper is of interest to SE practitioners, those who perform empirical studies, those interested in qualitative data collection and analysis, those involved in methodological studies, or those engaged in global diversity.