Agile Global Software Development Research Articles

Society 5.0 and Soft Skills in Agile Global Software Development

This paper presents the preliminary results about a systematic mapping of the soft skills suggested/considered important in the agile global software development (AGSD) with an impact on society 5.0. The papers selection method was carried out following a set of research objectives and questions defined from the GQM (Goal-Question-Metric) approach and a suggested systematic protocol for mapping in Software Engineering. Findings show that the existence of research related to soft skills in AGSD up to the date of this review, it is few, however, it is possible to observe that it has gained importance in the last three years.

Identifying Communication Issues Contributing to the Formation of Chaotic Situation: An AGSD View

The software can be constructed in many different contexts using various approaches to software creation, Software Development (GSD), Agile Software Development (ASD) and Agile Global Software Development (AGSD) in an ecumenically distributed way (a coalescence of GSD and ASD). This GSD (Global Engenderment of Software) is becoming increasingly important. Although communication is important in the sharing of information between team members, there are additional barriers to multi-site software creation, various time zones and cultures, IT infrastructure, etc., and delays in communication activities that are already problematic. In the case of Agile Global Software Development (AGSD), Agile Global Software Development (AGSD) is much more critical and plays a primary role in interaction and communication. The aim of this paper is to tackle the chaos problems associated with evolution of Agile Global Software (AGSD). We have obtained knowledge from previous works and from web reviews from worldwide, a literature review was conducted. Using a conceptual model, tabulated based on authors, and addressed also, the chaos issues are then illustrated. We identify the most discussed and less discussed issues in the literature. It is consequential to define the chaos issue in order to illustrate the genuine issues that subsisted in AGSD.

Toward Unveiling How SAFe Framework Supports Agile in Global Software Development

Current research has shown that global software development (GSD) organizations rely on agile methods to guarantee better communication, coordination, and improved productivity. Moreover, as organizations continue to grow, they are facing large-scale global project challenges and complexity, leading to an urge to scale agile practices for better coordination. However, it has been surprising to find that approaches in the literature on scaling agile for large and global projects remain unclear. In addition, to identify and highlight which agile scales practices reported in studies on Agile GSD (AGSD) are related to SAFe practices, we conducted a systematic literature review. Besides, we mapped AGSD practices to the SAFe 5.0 framework to provide bases for those starting on such a journey. In our study, we found 24 articles related to the scaling of agile practices in a global environment, and 44 scaling agile practices that embrace 95 SAFe 5.0 components, including “agile coaching,” “agile architecture,” and “system demo”. This study provides an in-depth scientific investigation on how SAFe can be associated with global teams applying GSD. The results and findings will benefit researchers and practitioners in conducting further research and provide more dedicated solutions for challenges to scaling agile in the context of GSD.

An Empirical Investigation of Factors Causing Scope Creep in Agile Global Software Development Context: A Conceptual Model for Project Managers

Scope creep is considered as one of the crucial reasons for the failure of traditional software development projects. The ability to manage and control the change elements on a project, particularly the project scope, is a key to project success. The notion of agile process was introduced to tackle the scope change-related challenges such as scope creep. By adopting an agile-footed process, the development organizations can react to the consistent market changes and client requests. However, continuous change accommodation may negatively impact on the success of the targeted project since the project manager mainly focuses on controlling scope change rather than analyzing its impact on the cost and quality. The agile-process advocates have accepted that this situation could happen even following agile methodology, which prompts on compromising the quality, postponed the plans, increases the cost, plan to modify, and diminished the consumer loyalty. Additionally, the scope-related challenge significantly increases, especially when managing scope creep in Global Software Development (GSD) context. Thus, there is a need to focus on scope creep factors in the context of AGSD. Motivated by this, current work aims at identifying the factors causing scope creep in the context of AGSD. To achieve the targeted objectives, we reported the current state-of-the-art related to existing scope creep models in AGSD context. We performed a systematic literature review and an empirical study to address the formulated research questions. The current study also identifies the additional challenges of scope creep from the industrial perspective. Based on the obtained results, the current work proposes a conceptual model for scope creep to assist the agile practitioners to effectively handle the scope creep, which ultimately increases the project success and forecasts change control effect on a software project. Moreover, the proposed conceptual model’s effectiveness is validated through expert judgment and a case study. The obtained promising results ensure the additional aspects of AGSD; hence, the project manager could overcome the project’s overall risk by implementing the proposed model.

Scrum+: A scaled Scrum for the agile global software development project management with multiple models

Nowadays, carrying out a project management is difficult in any situation, even more in global projects of software development, whose environment faces different aspects that make this type of projects even more difficult to manage, for example: lack of coordination, lack of face to face communication, temporary differences, cultural diversity and application of different standards, models and approaches. With the aim of supporting agile global software development (AGSD) project management when multiple models are present, we have defined Scrum+, which is a guide based on Scrum and defines a set of activities, tasks, roles and criteria to support AGSD projects in multimodel environments. We carried out the harmonization of agile approach Scrum along with project management practices defined in multiple models such as: ISO/IEC 15504, ISO 9001 and CMMI-DEV. Likewise, the evaluation of the proposal has been conducted through: (i) its application in a focus group with experts in different related areas and (ii) its assessment of the degree of agility by means 4-DAT method. Based on the analysis of the results and the comments obtained in the focus group, Scrum+ seems to be clear, adequate, and agile. The guide proposed here can serve as reference for studying further aspects related to agile software scaled projects.

Towards a reduction in architectural knowledge vaporization during agile global software development

Abstract Context The adoption of agile methods is a trend in global software development (GSD), but may result in many challenges. One important challenge is architectural knowledge (AK) management, since agile developers prefer sharing knowledge through face-to-face interactions, while in GSD the preferred manner is documents. Agile knowledge-sharing practices tend to predominate in GSD companies that practice agile development (AGSD), leading to a lack of documents, such as architectural designs, data models, deployment specifications, etc., resulting in the loss of AK over time, i.e., it vaporizes. Objective In a previous study, we found that there is important AK in the log files of unstructured textual electronic media (UTEM), such as instant messengers, emails, forums, etc., which are the preferred means employed in AGSD to contact remote teammates. The objective of this paper is to present and evaluate a proposal with which to recover AK from UTEM logs. We developed and evaluated a prototype that implements our proposal in order to determine its feasibility. Method The evaluation was performed by conducting a study with agile/global developers and students, who used the prototype and different UTEM to execute tasks that emulate common situations concerning AGSD teams’ lack of documentation during development phases. Results Our prototype was considered a useful, usable and unobtrusive tool when retrieving AK from UTEM logs. The participants also preferred our prototype when searching for AK and found AK faster with the prototype than with UTEM when the origin of the AK required was unknown. Conclusion The participants’ performance and perceptions when using our prototype provided evidence that our proposal could reduce AK vaporization in AGSD environments. These results encourage us to evaluate our proposal in a long-term test as future work.

A Framework for Agile Global Software Development: The Case of an International Software Company in Egypt

Objectives: Presenting the results of an Egyptian branch of an international company as a case study. The existing gap in the knowledge types and the impact of the lack interaction was investigated within the structure of the company team. Methods: This study is an exploratory case study. To enhance the data collection process and to answer the study’ questions, the following three phases were performed: interviews, online survey, and interviews. A descriptive statistical analysis and root – cause analysis were used to analyze the online survey in quantitative and qualitative attributes and a general framework coding for a thematic analysis to analyze the interviews. Finding: The results explore that: (1) the current structure of the Egyptian branch of an international company case study distributed teams faces an existing gap in the knowledge types (domain, technical, and application). (2) The existing gap in both of domain and technical knowledge leads to a gap in the application knowledge. (3) The lack of using qualified document, recording audio and video meetings between the distributed teams, Co-located practice, wikis (asynchronous tool) besides email, and the yearly planned formal training and training course create root causes for the existing knowledge gap. (4) Qualified document is standardized and contains the both test cases and user stories. (5) Recording audio and video meetings between the distributed teams especially in complex project is an excellent feedback. (6) The strategy of the Co-located practice, where the designers (offshore members) travel to collocate with Client engagement team (onshore team) during the requirements document preparing, is preferred by the most participants than the opposite. Application/Improvement: Capturing the existing gap in knowledge types for the agile partial offshoring model will lead to improving this model. Which increase the software quality and decrease delivery time and cost for international software development companies and software development’ clients. Keywords: AGSD, Communication, Coordination, Distributed Teams, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Types

Systematic literature review on agile practices in global software development

ContextDeveloping software in distributed development environments exhibits coordination, control and communication challenges. Agile practices, which demand frequent communication and self-organization between remote sites, are increasingly found in global software development (GSD) to mitigate said challenges. ObjectiveWe aim to provide detailed insight into what is reported on the successful application of agile practices in GSD from 1999 to 2016 and also identify the most frequently applied agile practices and reported distribution scenarios. We further strive to uncover research opportunities and gaps in the field of agile GSD. MethodWe build our systematic literature review on top of a previous review, which investigated studies published between 1999 and 2009, and extend the review by years 2010–2016, for which we conduct both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. ResultsOur results show that the majority of the cases studied is global and involves complex distribution scenarios with Scrum or combined Scrum/Extreme Programming being the most used agile methods. Key results include that in contrast to 1999–2009, where four Extreme Programming practices were among the ten most frequently used agile practices, in 2010–2016 Scrum is in the center of agile GSD implementations with eight Scrum-based practices in the top ten agile practices used in GSD. ConclusionAgile GSD is a maturing research field with higher quality contributions and a greater variety of publication types and methods from 2010 to 2016 than before from 1999 to 2009. However, researchers need to report full empirical contextual details of their studied cases in order to improve the generalizability of results and allow the future creation of stronger frameworks to drive the implementation of agile practices in GSD.

Review of approaches to manage architectural knowledge in Agile Global Software Development

Nowadays, Agile and Global Software Development (AGSD) has brought benefits and new challenges to the software industry. Among the main challenges is Architecture Knowledge Management (AKM), due to the following reasons: (i) in Agile Software Development team members prefer to convey knowledge in a face-to-face manner, over transmitting it through formal documents; and (ii) an efficient AKM in Global Software Development involves managing explicit knowledge. These opposite paradigms turn AKM into an unsolved issue in AGSD. In this study, the authors present a systematic mapping review about AKM in AGSD. From this review, they identified nine approaches that AGSD companies use to overcome the AKM challenge, which are grouped in three areas: (i) documentation artefact-based, (ii) communication-based, and (iii) methodological-based. Also, they found that the selected papers evenly support the three phases of the integrated knowledge management cycle (creation/capture, sharing/dissemination and acquisition/application), although only 7% of them support the capture of architectural knowledge in a formalised way. Finally, they conclude proposing critical points to consider in the implementation of AKM solutions in AGSD, and presenting their directions of future work.

An exploratory study in communication in Agile Global Software Development

Global software development (GSD) is gaining ever more relevance. Although communication is key in the exchange of information between team members, multi-site software development has introduced additional obstacles (different time-zones and cultures, IT infrastructure, etc.) and delays into the act of communication, which is already problematic. Communication is even more critical in the case of Agile Global Software Development (AGSD) in which communication plays a primary role. This paper reports an exploratory study of the effects of tools supporting communication in AGSD. More precisely, this paper analyses the perception of team members about communication infrastructures in AGSD. The research question to which this study responds concerns how development teams perceive the communication infrastructure while developing products using agile methodologies. Most previous studies have dealt with communication support from a highly technological media tool perspective. In this research work, instead, observations were obtained from three perspectives: communication among team members, communication of the status of the development process, and communication of the status of the progress of the product under development. It has been possible to show that team members perceive advantages to using media tools that make them feel in practice that teams are co-located, such as smartboards supported by efficient video-tools, and combining media tools with centralized repository tools, with information from the process development and product characteristics, that allow distributed teams to effectively share information about the status of the project/process/product during the development process in order to overcome some of the still existing problems in communication in AGSD.

Cloud Computing as an Enabler of Agile Global Software Development

Agile global software development (AGSD) is an increasingly prevalent software development strategy, as organizations hope to realize the benefits of accessing a larger resource pool of skilled labor, at a potentially reduced cost, while at the same time delivering value incrementally and iteratively. However, the distributed nature of AGSD creates geographic, temporal, socio-cultural distances that challenge collaboration between project stakeholders. The Cloud Computing (CC) service models of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) are similar to the aspirant qualities of AGSD as they provide services that are globally accessible, efficient, and stable, with lower predictable operating costs that scale to meet the computational demand. This study focused on the 12 agile principles upon which all agile methodologies are based, therein potentially increasing the potential for the findings to be generalized. Domestication Theory was used to assist in understanding how cloud technologies were appropriated in support of AGSD. The research strategy took the form of case study research. The findings suggest that some of the challenges in applying the agile principles in AGSD may be overcome by using CC.

A Framework for Risk Management in Globally Distributed Agile Software Development (Agile GSD)

Global Software development (GSD) is gaining popularity as it helps in saving cost and reduces time to market. GSD faces various challenges like communication problems, time-zone differences and cultural differences. Agile principles are used as a means to increase production rate by making processes more responsive to change. Since success of using agile methodologies is dependent on communication and collaboration, combining agile with distributed development (Agile GSD) becomes a risky process. In the current literature, few research papers mention about the risk involved in globally distributed agile development process. This paper contributes by identifying some of the most relevant risk and suggesting risk mitigation strategies in the form of a framework for risk management for globally distributed agile development. The framework is created based on the literature available and the interviews of project managers and developers conducted in three software development organizations in Pune (India). Each component of the framework is discussed in the paper in detail. The research will be relevant for the project managers who are handling distribute agile projects.