An Agile, Intelligent and Scalable Framework for Global Software Development
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 33122
An Agile, Intelligent and Scalable Framework for Global Software Development

Authors: Raja Asad Zaheer, Aisha Tanveer, Hafza Mehreen Fatima

Abstract:

Global Software Development (GSD) is becoming a common norm in software industry, despite of the fact that global distribution of the teams presents special issues for effective communication and coordination of the teams. Now trends are changing and project management for distributed teams is no longer in a limbo. GSD can be effectively established using agile and project managers can use different agile techniques/tools for solving the problems associated with distributed teams. Agile methodologies like scrum and XP have been successfully used with distributed teams. We have employed exploratory research method to analyze different recent studies related to challenges of GSD and their proposed solutions. In our study, we had deep insight in six commonly faced challenges: communication and coordination, temporal differences, cultural differences, knowledge sharing/group awareness, speed and communication tools. We have established that each of these challenges cannot be neglected for distributed teams of any kind. They are interlinked and as an aggregated whole can cause the failure of projects. In this paper we have focused on creating a scalable framework for detecting and overcoming these commonly faced challenges. In the proposed solution, our objective is to suggest agile techniques/tools relevant to a particular problem faced by the organizations related to the management of distributed teams. We focused mainly on scrum and XP techniques/tools because they are widely accepted and used in the industry. Our solution identifies the problem and suggests an appropriate technique/tool to help solve the problem based on globally shared knowledgebase. We can establish a cause and effect relationship using a fishbone diagram based on the inputs provided for issues commonly faced by organizations. Based on the identified cause, suitable tool is suggested, our framework suggests a suitable tool. Hence, a scalable, extensible, self-learning, intelligent framework proposed will help implement and assess GSD to achieve maximum out of it. Globally shared knowledgebase will help new organizations to easily adapt best practices set forth by the practicing organizations.

Keywords: Agile project management, agile framework, distributed teams, global software development.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1339231

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2713

References:


[1] Herbsleb, James D., and Audris Mockus. "An empirical study of speed and communication in globally distributed software development." Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on 29, no. 6 (2003): 481-494.
[2] Komi‐Sirviö, Seija, and Maarit Tihinen. "Lessons learned by participants of distributed software development." Knowledge and Process Management 12, no. 2 (2005): 108-122.
[3] Thissen, M. Rita, Jean M. Page, Madhavi C. Bharathi, and Toyia L. Austin. "Communication tools for distributed software development teams." InProceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on Computer personnel research: The global information technology workforce, pp. 28-35. ACM, 2007.
[4] Sutherland, Jeff, Anton Viktorov, Jack Blount, and Nikolai Puntikov. "Distributed scrum: Agile project management with outsourced development teams." In System Sciences, 2007. HICSS 2007. 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on, pp. 274a-274a. IEEE, 2007.
[5] Razzak, Mohammad Abdur, and Rizwan Ahmed. "Knowledge sharing in distributed agile projects: Techniques, strategies and challenges." In Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), 2014 Federated Conference on, pp. 1431-1440. IEEE, 2014.
[6] Phalnikar, Rashmi, V. S. Deshpande, and S. D. Joshi. "Applying agile principles for distributed software development." In Advanced Computer Control, 2009. ICACC'09. International Conference on, pp. 535-539. IEEE, 2009.
[7] Sureshchandra, Kalpana, and Jagadish Shrinivasavadhani. "Adopting agile in distributed development." In Global Software Engineering, 2008. ICGSE 2008. IEEE International Conference on, pp. 217-221. IEEE, 2008.
[8] Sutherland, Jeff, Guido Schoonheim, Eelco Rustenburg, and Maurits Rijk. "Fully distributed scrum: The secret sauce for hyper productive offshored development teams." In Agile, 2008. AGILE'08. Conference, pp. 339-344. IEEE, 2008.
[9] Nuevo, Eva del, Mario Piattini, and Francisco J. Pino. "Scrum-based methodology for distributed software development." In Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2011 6th IEEE International Conference on, pp. 66-74. IEEE, 2011.
[10] Lee, Seiyoung, and Hwan-Seung Yong. "Distributed agile: project management in a global environment." Empirical Software Engineering 15, no. 2 (2010): 204-217.
[11] Shrivastava, Suprika Vasudeva. "Distributed agile software development: A review." arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.1955 (2010).
[12] Smits, Hubert, and Guy Pshigoda. "Implementing scrum in a distributed software development organization." In Agile Conference (AGILE), 2007, pp. 371-375. IEEE, 2007.
[13] Paasivaara, Maria, Sandra Durasiewicz, and Casper Lassenius. "Distributed agile development: Using Scrum in a large project." In Global Software Engineering, 2008. ICGSE 2008. IEEE International Conference on, pp. 87-95. IEEE, 2008.
[14] Cristal, Mauricio, Daniel Wildt, and Rafael Prikladnicki. "Usage of Scrum practices within a global company." In Global Software Engineering, 2008. ICGSE 2008. IEEE International Conference on, pp. 222-226. IEEE, 2008.
[15] Razavi, Abbas Moshref, and Rabiah Ahmad. "Agile development in large and distributed environments: A systematic literature review on organizational, managerial and cultural aspects." In Software Engineering Conference (MySEC), 2014 8th Malaysian, pp. 216-221. IEEE, 2014.
[16] Marquardt, M. J., & Horvath, L. (2014). Global teams: How top multinationals span boundaries and cultures with high-speed teamwork. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
[17] Wieringa, R., Maiden, N., Mead, N., & Rolland, C. (2006). Requirements engineering paper classification and evaluation criteria: a proposal and a discussion. Requirements Engineering, 11(1), 102-107.
[18] Herbsleb, J. D. (2007, May). Global software engineering: The future of socio-technical coordination. In 2007 Future of Software Engineering (pp. 188-198). IEEE Computer Society.
[19] da Silva, F. Q., Costa, C., Franca, A. C. C., & Prikladinicki, R. (2010, August). Challenges and solutions in distributed software development project management: a systematic literature review. In Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2010 5th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 87-96). IEEE.
[20] Hossain, E., Babar, M. A., Paik, H. Y., &Verner, J. (2009, December). Risk identification and mitigation processes for using scrum in global software development: A conceptual framework. In Software Engineering Conference, 2009. APSEC'09. Asia-Pacific (pp. 457-464). IEEE.
[21] Tariq, A., & Khan, A. A. (2012, October). Framework supporting team and project activities in Global Software Development (GSD). In Emerging Technologies (ICET), 2012 International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
[22] da Silva, F. Q., Costa, C., Franca, A. C. C., & Prikladinicki, R. (2010, August). Challenges and solutions in distributed software development project management: a systematic literature review. In Global Software Engineering (ICGSE), 2010 5th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 87-96). IEEE.