Distributed agile software development

Distributed Agile Software Development

Introduction [Tim] 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

History / Research [Joas]

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 lead 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. [7] This section describes the risk and challenges involved in Agile distributed software engineering.

Challenges [Abtin]

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 [0]:

• Documentation: where offshore organizations favor plan driven design where detailed requirements are sent offshore to be constructed.[4] 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 [2]. 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. [6]

Risks [Joas]

A study done in 2013 has tried to consolidate the literature on risk management in distributed Agile development [7]. 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 application [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 the 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 is done efficiently and clearly.

Technology Setup:

Risk factors which 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 [Harinee]

Global Software Development (or Distribution of Development) appears to cause diminished perceivability of 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 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 deliverables. 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 [10]. Along these lines, enforcing agile in a distributed environment has demonstrated to be valuable for the quality of the project and its execution. Thus, these can be seen as some of the advantages achieved by combining agile in Distributed Development[11].

Best practices [Tim]

What are best practices to make Agile work?

Tools and techniques [Abtin]

In the following list tools and techniques are discussed which can be helpful in trying to overcome the challenges faced with agile distributed software development [0].

• Improve communication: minimize the time it takes to set up and tear down a communication session and favor video conferencing over voice conferencing if it is available.
• Face to face contact opportunities: encourage face to face communication with the whole team in order to help build rapport. It is beneficial to do this at the start to set out a plan to which the team can adhere throughout the project. In addition it is also beneficial in the last few iterations before the release of the final deliverable [6].
• Dealing with time-zone differences: one option with regards to dealing with the problem of availability for meetings due to time zones is to appoint a representative for the team which serves as an intermediary for the two teams having formed good rapport with both. Another option is to use nested scrum with multilevel reporting and multiple daily scrum meetings [8].
• Keeping up with agile practices: it might be that due to the distributed nature the team might veer off of solid established practices of Agile and therefore there needs to 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.
• Importance of good documentation: it is important to maintain documentation for the project to improve the group collaboration in using agile in a DSD setting. [8] [x11] [x9] [7x] In addition various tools like issue trackers can be used to improve maintaining documentation and keeping transparency. [x11]
• Use of tools to aid in helping improve communication in addition to maintaining the code and supporting in debugging or providing users with information by means of for instance a wiki. There are too many to name, but some which can be considered:
  • Social networking tools.
  • Communication tools such as an instant messaging tool.
  • Software configuration management tools preferably with embedded bug and issue tracking databases and knowledge centers (such as Github).

References [0] Jiménez, M., Piattini, M., & Vizcaíno, A. (2009). Challenges and improvements in distributed software development: A systematic review. *Advances in Software Engineering*, *2009*. [1] Prikladnicki, R., Damian, D., & Audy, J. L. N. (2008, June). Patterns of evolution in the practice of distributed software development: quantitative results from a systematic review. In *12th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE) 12* (pp. 1-10). [2] Fowler, M., & Highsmith, J. (2001). The agile manifesto. Software Development, 9(8), 28-35. [3] Ramesh, B., Cao, L., Mohan, K., & Xu, P. (2006). Can distributed software development be agile?. Communications of the ACM, 49(10), 41-46. [4] Razavi, A. M., & Ahmad, R. (2014, September). Agile development in large and distributed environments: A systematic literature review on organizational, managerial and cultural aspects. In 2014 8th. Malaysian Software Engineering Conference (MySEC) (pp. 216-221). IEEE. [5] Ghani, I., Lim, A., Hasnain, M., Ghani, I., & Babar, M. I. (2019). Challenges in Distributed Agile Software Development Environment: A Systematic Literature Review. KSII Transactions on Internet & Information Systems, 13(9).[6] Shrivastava, S. V. (2010). Distributed agile software development: A review. *arXiv preprint arXiv:1006.1955*. [7] Shrivastava, S. V., & Rathod, U. (2014). Risks in distributed agile development: A review. *Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences*, *133*, 417-424. [8] Shrivastava, S. V., & Rathod, U. (2015). Categorization of risk factors for distributed agile projects. *Information and Software Technology*, *58*, 373-387. [9] Pressman, R. S. (2005). *Software engineering: a practitioner's approach*. Palgrave macmillan. [10] M.Paasivaara, S. Durasiewicz, C.Lassenius, Using Scrum in Distributed Agile Development: A Multiple Case Study, IEEE International Conference on Global Software Engineering , p.195-204, 2009 [11] JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1, MAY 2010 http://sites.google.com/site/jcseuk/I Distributed Agile Software Development: A Review Suprika Vasudeva Shrivastava and Hema Date