Context. Global software development (GSD) has become a significant practice in software industry due to rapid globalization processes and technological advances. In GSD, software development activities are carried at geographically distributed locations by collaboration of people with different background and culture. In this study, we studied an area of global software maintenance from both of state of the art and state of practice in order to understand which challenges are hampering the effectiveness of distributed maintenance team as well as which mitigation strategies can appease their impact. Objectives. The study unravels challenges of global software maintenance and alleviation strategies to address to those challenges by methodically reviewing relevant studies and industrial practitioners’ experiences. It also explores the convergence and divergence between the outcome from scientific studies and industrial settings Methods. Data collection processes are done through systematic literature review and industrial interviews. In the systematic review a variety of article sources are queried, including Compendex, Inspec, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Wiley Inter Science, Scopus, Science Direct, ISI WOS and Springer Link. Interviews are conducted with five practitioners from 4 different multinational organizations. As data analysis methods, grounded theory and qualitative comparative analysis are applied. Results. Totally, 90 different challenges and 73 strategies were revealed. Unlike most of similar studies in GSD which used 3C categorization (Communication, Control and Coordination), we come up with a different view as we called 3PT which conceptualizes challenges and strategies into People, Process, Product and Technology factors. Conclusions. We conclude that collaborative processes and their clear definitions among all maintenance stakeholders are one of the critical success factors of effective maintenance in global collaboration. Most importantly, a maintenance management should focus on the holistic improvement of each factor in 3PT and their synergy can contribute much to the successful software maintenance in globally distributed environment.

We found that collaborative processes and their clear definitions among all maintenance stakeholders are one of the critical success factors of effective maintenance in global collaboration. Most importantly, a maintenance management should focus on the holistic improvement of each factor in 3PT and their synergy can contribute much to the successful software maintenance in globally distributed environment.