Communication in Distributed Agile Development: A Case Study :: Technology, Software Development

Distributed software package system development (DSD)1 is decorous acommon practice in modern software manufacture e.g. 1,where the level of distribution can range from teammembers being primed(p) in the very(prenominal) city to those on polar continents 2. The significance of DSD has deepen because of factors such as improving timetomarketthrough constant development crosswise differenttimezones,quick formation of virtual teams and thebenefits of business market advantages. These demand havedriven the software development efforts further towards amultisiteglobally distributed environment. 1Simultaneously, several studies have concluded thatdistributed enterprises are risky e.g. 35.For example,communication and coordination, software quality,schedule overruns and exceeded costs are some of theproblems troubling both singlesiteand distributedsoftware projects. However, the extent of the problem inthe case of DSD seems to be so analyzable that a thoroughunderstanding of it has not yet been defined. 3, 4 Severalstudies agree that communication is a particularlyimportant issue in distributed straightaway development, e.g. 57.Agile methods rely on volatile requirements that aremanaged through in force(p) verbal communication 8 andthus agile software development methods bewilder their ownchallenges to the field of DSD.In order to tackle the problems of DSD, severaldifferent techniques have been proposed. Thesetechniques range from using different tools, such as mo messaging 9, videoconferencing 10 andwhiteboard software 5 to a set of much generalrecommendations 5. We conducted two different casestudies with different levels of distribution ranging fromthe customer being in the same city, to one with ageographical distribution of 600 kilometers within thesame country. Therefore, cultural differences were not anissue in these cases. We compared our findings against therecommendations of Layman et al. 5 and provide moreinsight on their application based on our empiricalfindings and the subsisting literature. Even though we wereable to evaluate only three recommendations knocked out(p) of theexisting four, our contribution provides valuable insightinto conducting distributed agile projects. Our resultsfurther emphasize the critical role of effectivecommunication, indicating that inefficient and irregularcommunication in conjunction with volatile requirementscan cause severe problems even in very smallscaleagileprojects. However, it seems that effective communicationis not the key. Our cases suggest that having a welldefinedcustomer2 is the key recommendation affecting torecommendations about having a Development autobus5 and using asynchronous communication channels. Asineffective customer coaction may render the otherrecommendations redundant, effective customercollaboration seems to be a key factor for successfuldistributed agile development. In addition, wefull complement the existing recommendations by introducingan additiona l recommendation i.e. enable and support pass communication between the developers.Unexpectedly, the teams in the second case were notallowed to air directly with each other. Tocompensate, a managementledcommunication channelwas established to labyrinthine sense the communication flow,