Distributed agile software development
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Distributed Agile Software Development
Distributed Agile Software Development is a research area which considers the effects of applying the principles of Agile software development to software development in a globally distributed development setting. The goal of applying these principles is overcoming challenges in projects which are geographically distributed.
While the principles of Agile software development already provide structures to promote better communication, not having face-to-face interaction takes away one of the core principles. This makes Distributed Agile Software Development more challenging than general Agile Software Development requiring a different focus and different techniques.
History / Research
The increasing globalization with the aid of novel capabilities provided by the technological efficacy of the Internet has led software development companies to offshore their development efforts to more economically attractive areas. This phenomenon began in the 90s, while its strategic importance was realized in the 2000s [0]. Most initial related studies also date from around this time [1].
During this time, the Agile manifesto was released [2], which represents a departure from the more traditional waterfall approach to software development. This naturally leads to the question, "can **distributed** software development be Agile?". One of the first comprehensive reviews trying to answer this question was done in 2006 [3]. Later, in 2014, a systematic literature review (SLR) was done to identify the main problems in getting Agile to work in a distributed fashion [4]. In 2019, a similar SLR was done [5]. Moreover, a general review on the subject was done in [6].
In all, Agile distributed software development remains a highly dynamic field, research continues to be done on all of its facets, indicating that it offers unique opportunities and advantages over more traditional methods, but not without imposing its own challenges and risks.
Challenges & Risks
Distributed software development has its own inherent challenges due to spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural differences between distributed teams. Combining it with the Agile method, in turn, increases the severity of the risks involved, as both methods are in direct contrast with each other. Agile was originally intended to be used by collocated teams, as it is based on informal communication and close collaboration. Distributed development, however, requires formal communication, clear standards, guidelines, and rigid structure. [1] This section describes the risk and challenges involved in Agile distributed software engineering.
Challenges
Inherently Agile has a large emphasis on face to face communication as is reflected in principle number six of the agile software development manifesto. This is however not possible when working in a distributed environment. Because of this conflict, the following challenges arise[2]:
- Documentation: where offshore organizations favor plan-driven design where detailed requirements are sent offshore to be constructed.[3] This conflicts with agile teams that give documentation a lower priority. The result of this situation is that misunderstandings are a lot more likely to arise.
- Pair programming: where two programmers work side by side to work on a particular problem is common in Agile and it has been shown to yield better products in less time while keeping the programmers themselves content in the process [4]. Because of the distance between teams this is a lot harder to achieve.
- Different time zones: depending on the time zone of each distributed team it obviously makes it more challenging to arrange meetings at times when both teams are available.
- Teaching: those who enter into the field of distributed agile software development are usually already familiar with practices of agile software development in the non-distributed setting. This is because training employees who are not co-located is challenging, think of the differences in background and cultural differences.
- Distribution of work: from all the aforementioned challenges this is the most important. We want to avoid the architecture to reflect the team’s geographical distribution by distributing the work based on the location. Because of this reason, it is better to distribute tasks relating to a single story across the whole team, thinking in terms of the stories, not the components. [5]
Risks
A study done in 2013 has tried to consolidate the literature on risk management in distributed Agile development [1]. A more comprehensive study has tried to categorize the risk factors for distributed agile projects in [8], this was done utilizing both research literature and real-world experience from thirteen IT organizations. For the sake of brevity, the full list of forty-five risk factors, with corresponding management techniques is omitted. Instead, a brief summary of the main categories and overall management techniques is given.
Risk Categories
Software Development Life Cycle: This category comprises the risk factors related to various activities of software development like customer specification of requirements and planning, modeling, construction, and deployment of software applications [9]. Many of the risk factors in this category stem from ineffective knowledge sharing. Unclear objectives, requirements, differences in practices of standard processes or inconsistencies across designs to name a few. Many of these risks can be managed by making sure that knowledge is shared effectively. More specifically, make sure that the objective of the project is crystal clear across teams, as well as the requirements. Automate and standardize as much of the development cycle as possible, so that each team is working with the same technology stack and infrastructure. In short, ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Project Management:
Project management relates to tasks such as project planning, project organizing, project staffing, project directing, and control. This category involves risks due to interactions between development activities and managerial activities. The adoption of distributed Agile development will transform the way in which the project needs to be managed. If this is not done carefully, risks might include a lower initial velocity, teams reorganizing every sprint, or a lack of uniformity in multisite team's capabilities.
Group Awareness:
Risk factors related to a lack of group awareness are grouped in this category. Group awareness requires intensive communication, coordination, collaboration, and trust among the group members. Collocated teams achieve this awareness more easily, as it flows more naturally from being in the same physical location. To manage the risks involved with a lack of group awareness, spatially dispersed teams will have to use a more disciplined approach in communication using the latest technological tools. Practices such as co-locating initially, to set the track for the project, have proved to be effective in managing risk.
External Stakeholder Collaboration:
These factors relate to collaboration with customers, vendors, and third-party developers. Managing its risks boils down to making sure that the coordination and communication with these external actors are done efficiently and clearly.
Technology Setup:
Risk factors that arise due to inappropriate tool usage are grouped in this category. For example, a lack of communication structure can be solved by providing the teams with the means to do video conference calls. Besides that, choosing the right tools to use during a project is important. This can vary across projects, teams, and use cases, so an analysis beforehand on the tools to use is recommended.
Opportunities
Global Software Development (or Distribution of Development) appears to cause diminished perceivability of the agile process or status of project dependent on short ceaseless iterations that make it simpler to visualize the issues or criticalities on the initial stages of the project. Continuous integration of programming code, which is one of the focal pieces of agile methodology, additionally serves to reduce the setup of the executive issues. Utilization of agile principles appears to positively affect correspondence between groups as advancement in cycles makes it simpler for members to see the short-term objectives. Sprint reviews can be seen as a powerful method to improve external correspondence whilst they help to share data about the features and prerequisite conditions between partners or stakeholders. Agile practices also assist in building trust between various societies associated with the procedure by consistent communication and conveyance of programming deliverable. As indicated by an investigation made by Passivara, Durasiewicz also, Lassenius, the software quality, and correspondence are improved, and communication and coordinated effort are more regular comparatively as a result of the Scrum approach utilized in the undertaking. Additionally, the inspiration of colleagues was accounted for to have expanded Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page)..
A solution for having scrum meetings in teams that cope with time-zone differences is making a distinction between local team meetings and global scrum meetings [6]. Each team has a local meeting at the start of their day and a global meeting at another time of the day. This is only possible if their working days have overlapping time.
Keeping up with Agile practices
Due to the distributed nature, a team might veer off of solid established practices of Agile. Therefore there should be someone with the role of the coach that keeps the team on track. They should also take it upon themselves to think of alternatives for the distributed work environment using agile.
To keep every team member informed about the agile process, it is important to maintain documentation for the project. This improves the group collaboration in using agile in a DSD setting [7] [8] [9] [10] . For this, various tools can be used which support the team in maintaining the documentation [8].
Use of tools
Various tools and platforms can be used to improve communication in a distributed setting.
Communication
There are various tools available to support Communication in Distributed Software Development. Asynchronous tools like e-mail, synchronous tools like audio and video conferencing software and hybrid tools like instant messaging provide team members with the means to have the necessary meetings and communications. Another example is tools that support social networking to create a shared experience between team members across locations.
Project Management
To guide the project and make sure that all teams and team members have a clear vision of what work has to be done, project management platforms like issue management tools should be used.
Development tools
To provide a shared experience for every team member, every team member should have access to the same tools for their development []. Having the same software configuration management tools linked to project management tools enables developers to work at the same pace and communicate about the development in a similar way.
Knowledge management
To give every team member access to the same knowledge about the product and the development, tools like wiki or knowledge bases can be used.
References
- ^ a b Shrivastava, S.V. and Rathod, U., 2014. Risks in distributed agile development: A review. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 133, pp.417-424.
- ^ Shrivastava, S.V., 2010. Distributed agile software development: A review. arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.1955.
- ^ M. Fowler, ” Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore development”, http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileOffshore.html, July 2006 (Retrieved on May 11, 2020)
- ^ Williams, L., Kessler, R.R., Cunningham, W. and Jeffries, R., 2000. Strengthening the case for pair programming. IEEE software, 17(4), pp.19-25
- ^ Ade Miller,” Distributed Agile Development at Microsoft patterns and practices”, Microsoft patterns and practices, http://www.pnpguidance.net/Post/DistributedAgile 16 DevelopmentMicrosoftPatternsPractices, October 2008. (retrieved on May 11, 2020)
- ^ J. Sutherland, A. Viktorov, J. Blount and N. Puntikov, "Distributed Scrum: Agile Project Management with Outsourced Development Teams," 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07), Waikoloa, HI, 2007, pp. 274a-274a, doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2007.180.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
isdsdowas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ a b Hossain, E., Babar, M.A., Paik, H.Y. and Verner, J., 2009, December. Risk identification and mitigation processes for using scrum in global software development: A conceptual framework. In 2009 16th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (pp. 457-464). IEEE.
- ^ Holmström, H., Fitzgerald, B., Ågerfalk, P.J. and Conchúir, E.Ó., 2006. Agile practices reduce distance in global software development. Information systems management, 23(3), pp.7-18.
- ^ Berczuk, S., 2007, August. Back to basics: The role of agile principles in success with an distributed scrum team. In Agile 2007 (AGILE 2007) (pp. 382-388). IEEE.