A Holistic Approach to Developing a Progress Tracking System for Distributed Agile Teams

Abstract

Managing development progress in agile projects is a co-ordination problem. Several technical factors (e.g. source code versioning, unit testing, acceptance testing, continuous integration and releasing) affect the progress status, hence, they need to be managed. In distributed agile projects, manual-based methods (such as communication via video-conferencing tools) are insufficient. Distributed agile teams find it difficult, with infrequent communications, to understand how the work of one team member at one site influences the work progress of another team member at a different site. Moreover, current technology-based methods (such as project management tools) are static and rely completely on team members to consider any impact of the technical factors on development progress. The lack of mechanisms to effectively manage progress change resulting from the technical factors may lead to the project being delayed or to low quality code. In this paper, we propose a holistic approach to developing a progress tracking system that supports identifying and co-ordinating the impact of the various technical factors on the development progress. The result will provide distributed agile teams with an improved awareness of the actual progress.