Distributed software development (DSD)1 is becoming a
common practice in modern software industry [e.g. 1],
where the level of distribution can range from team
members being located in the same city to those on
different continents [2]. The significance of DSD has
accelerated because of factors such as improving timetomarket
through constant development across different
timezones,
quick formation of virtual teams and the
benefits of business market advantages. These needs have
driven the software development efforts further towards a
multisite
globally distributed environment. [1]
Simultaneously, several studies have concluded that
distributed enterprises are risky [e.g. 35].
For example,
communication and coordination, software quality,
schedule overruns and exceeded costs are some of the
problems troubling both singlesite
and distributed
software projects. However, the extent of the problem in
the case of DSD seems to be so complex that a thorough
understanding of it has not yet been defined. [3, 4] Several
studies agree that communication is a particularly
important issue in distributed agile development, [e.g. 57].
Agile methods rely on volatile requirements that are
managed through efficient verbal communication [8] and
thus agile software development methods pose their own
challenges to the field of DSD.
In order to tackle the problems of DSD, several
different techniques have been proposed. These
techniques range from using different tools, such as
instant messaging [9], videoconferencing [10] and
whiteboard software [5] to a set of more general
recommendations [5]. We conducted two different case
studies with different levels of distribution ranging from
the customer being in the same city, to one with a
geographical distribution of 600 kilometers within the
same country. Therefore, cultural differences were not an
issue in these cases. We compared our findings against the
recommendations of Layman et al. [5] and provide more
insight on their application based on our empirical
findings and the existing literature. Even though we were
able to evaluate only three recommendations out of the
existing four, our contribution provides valuable insight
into conducting distributed agile projects. Our results
further emphasize the critical role of effective
communication, indicating that inefficient and irregular
communication in conjunction with volatile requirements
can cause severe problems even in very smallscale
agile
projects. However, it seems that effective communication
is not the key. Our cases suggest that having a welldefined
customer2 is the key recommendation affecting to
recommendations about having a Development Manager
[5] and using asynchronous communication channels. As
ineffective customer collaboration may render the other
recommendations redundant, effective customer
collaboration seems to be a key factor for successful
distributed agile development. In addition, we
complement the existing recommendations by introducing
an additional recommendation: i.e. enable and support
direct communication between the developers.
Unexpectedly, the teams in the second case were not
allowed to communicate directly with each other. To
compensate, a managementled
communication channel
was established to balance the communication flow,
... September). A gap analysis methodology for the team software process. In Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC), 2010 Seventh International Conference on the (pp. 424-429). Retrieved from Google Scholar database.
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