Posts Tagged: Distributed Teams

Software Engineering — Comments Off
11
Oct 11

Agile Software Development for Distributed Teams – Part 4: Evaluation and Summary

Introduction

In the previous posts of this series various benefits and obstacles of agile software development for distributed (offshored) teams were shown and solutions for these problems were provided. On basis of the Eclipse development process an implementation of this variation of the original agile principles was provided and it could be seen that such an approach can be a success.

In the final post the original defined twelve principles will be evaluated and it will be determined if each of them is still applicable in such a distributed environment.
Continue reading →

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13
Sep 11

Agile Software Development for Distributed Teams – Part 3: Case-Study on Eclipse

Introduction

The previous post showed some additional practices for agile software development with distributed teams. This post will give you an example of a project which is successfully developed for a long time using globally distributed teams and open source contributors.
Furthermore, the main agile practices will be highlighted and the additional practices which are followed for the distributed environment will be pointed out. Continue reading →

Software Engineering — Comments Off
25
Aug 11

Agile Software Development for Distributed Teams – Part 2: Best Practices

Introduction

The previous post on distributed agile software development – which can be a result of offshoring, outsourcing, multiple sites or just separated rooms within a company – discussed the benefits, motivation and the new challenges which will arise in such an environment. The follow-up post in this series will cover proven practices which can help to face these new challenges and lead to a successful project execution. Continue reading →

Software Engineering — 1 Comment
16
Aug 11

Agile Software Development for Distributed Teams – Part 1: Motivation and Challenges

Introduction

When looking at the 4th annual survey on the state of agile development conducted by VersionOne [Ver09] two trends within the world of software development can be identified:

  • Agile Development Practices: 84% of the surveys participants work in companies which are using agile practices for software development.
  • Distributed Development Teams: 58% of the surveys participants work in companies which have distributed teams.

However, by definition agile software development requires a close physical proximity of all participants ranging from the developers up to the customer. For example face-to-face communication is an important key aspects of agile software development [SW07] and it is obvious that this practice will not be feasible within distributed teams. How can these two fundamentally different software development paradigms be combined? What new challenges will the involved parties face? What drawbacks will arise with regard to the agility of the development when the agile principles are applied to distributed teams? This series of blog posts tries to provide answers to these questions by evaluating the experiences which where gathered within different agile distributed software projects.

The first part of this series will focus on the motivation and the new challenges which have to be faced when developing software in an agile and decentralized manner. Continue reading →