Distributed Agile Development; Suitability, Challenges and Practices
2013 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years))
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
Uncertainty in software development and business environment and the need to increase the
speed of development have driven organizations to search for methods that are responsive to
both change and speed. Providing iterative development, agile development involves
customers and users through different phases of development, and delivers frequent releases
of software to customer while receives the corresponding feedback. Using this approach, agile
development thus aims at addressing mentioned issues of speed and uncertainty while
developing only what customer needs from the beginning of the project. On the other hand,
distributed software development is used in many organizations to reach global talent and
global market. The problems associated with distributed software development such as lack of
enough communication and team coherency, have forced project managers to combine it with
agile to mitigate these social problems. This study focuses on distributed agile development,
its suitability for a typical project and its challenges and deficiencies. Text analysis and
interviews using qualitative methods are used in this scientific research work. From the
theoretical view point, different text covering agile methodology, distributed development and
combination of them were considered. This study covered two parts: first, an evaluation of
agile and distributed development opportunities and problems to help determine whether or
not distributed development is suitable for a project and second, considering the challenges
once starting to use this method and practices required to regard them. For the empirical part,
the focus was put on Volvo IT employees by having seven interviews with members who are
currently active in distributed agile development. These interviews were used to compare and
verify the finding of the theoretical part. The results of the study were categorized into two
sections. In the first part, important elements required to verify the suitability of using this
method are provided. The recommended factors for this evaluation are cost, productivity,
customer, team structure, etc. In the second part, the challenges of using distributed agile
development were categorized into four parts: (a) challenges of selected agile method, which
the focus in this study is Scrum, (b) challenges with time-zone differences, (c) communication
challenges and (d) finally team building challenges. The required practices to address these
challenges were also provided.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
University of Borås/School of Business and IT , 2013.
Series
Masteruppsats ; 2013MASI10
Keywords [en]
Scrum, Distributed Software Development (DSD), Agile Methodology, Global Software development (GSD), Communication, Time-zone Differences
National Category
Engineering and Technology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-17340Local ID: 2320/12749OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hb-17340DiVA, id: diva2:1309248
Note
Program: Masterutbildning i Informatik
2019-04-302019-04-302025-09-24