Distributed Agile Team Research Articles

Agility in virtual environments: the socio-technical approach of distributed agile teams

PurposeThis study aims to understand how distributed agile teams (DATs), encouraged by globalisation, and recently accelerated by the COVID-19 outbreak, adopt agile practices to achieve project goals by working virtually.Design/methodology/approachThis study developed a multiple-case study involving four companies undergoing several changes, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors collected data mainly through in-depth, face-to-face interviews with seven key informants. Moreover, this study operates data triangulation by referring to secondary data sources and developing a grounded theory data analysis.FindingsThe findings highlight three main categories associated with the DAT functioning, namely, “DATs’ implementation issues”, “elements supporting DATs’ implementation” and “outcomes of DATs’ implementation”, that show DATs’ primary triggers, critical aspects and supportive actions for team functioning.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper produced valuable theoretical knowledge of DATs’ dynamics within a socio-technical approach that distinguishes soft and hard variables supporting DAT implementation. Moreover, the evidence provides useful suggestions for managers about creating an objective-oriented virtual work environment based on DATs’ self-organisation, digitally shared leadership and occasional on-site socialisation.Originality/valueThis paper provides new and interesting insights that bring to evidence the main variables related to DATs’ adoption and dynamics, showing supporting activities that enhanced their operativity. It provides a valuable descriptive framework for academics and practitioners to understand DATs’ functioning better and take action to improve their implementation.

The establishment of transactive memory system in distributed agile teams engaged in AI-related knowledge work

PurposeAs a kind of knowledge-intensive team coordinated across physical distance, it is necessary to construct a meta-knowledge driven transactive memory system (TMS) for the knowledge management of distributed agile team (DAT). This study aims to explore the comprehensive antecedents of TMS establishment in DATs and considers how TMS establishment is affected by herding behavior under the artificial intelligence (AI)-related knowledge work environment that emerges with technology penetration.Design/methodology/approachThe data derived from 177 students of 52 DATs in a well-known Chinese business school, which were divided into 26 traditional knowledge work groups and 26 AI-related task groups to conduct a random comparative experiment. The ordinary least squares method was used to analyze the conceptual model and ANOVA was used to examine the differences in herding behavior between the control groups (traditional knowledge work DATs) and treatment groups (DATs engaged in AI-related knowledge work).FindingsThe results showed that knowledge diversity, professional knowledge, self-efficacy and social system use had significantly positive effects on the establishment of TMS. Interestingly, the authors also find that herding behavior may promote the process of establishing TMS of the new team, and this effect will be more significant when AI tasks are involved in team knowledge work.Originality/valueBy exploring the comprehensive antecedents of the establishment of TMS, this study provided a theoretical basis for knowledge management of DATs, especially in AI knowledge work teams. From a practical perspective, when the DAT is involved in AI-related knowledge works, managers should appropriately guide the convergence of employees’ behaviors and use the herding effects to accelerate the establishment of TMS, which will improve team knowledge sharing and innovation.

Using Logical Architecture Models for Inter-Team Management of Distributed Agile Teams

Projects at large-scale have been adopting agile practices in order to optimize how a group of teams deliver software, however has facing issues when dealing with work items that are dependent on each other, need for well-defined interfaces and shared understanding of the existing knowledge. Systems thinking and modeling can have important contributions in managing a process with this nature. This article proposes a design framework, called logical architecture-based distributed agile team management (LADATM), that uses logical architecture models to serve as the basis for the delivery of work items to distributed agile teams, support the identification of boundaries, dependencies and coordination needs, and derive an agile team product backlog. By performing Design Science Research (DSR) cycles, this article introduces the constructs of the LADATM framework. Afterwards, it demonstrates - using a research project - how it provided a systematized approach for process mananagement decision support for agile teams based in requirements models and through shared understanding.

Requirements identification for distributed agile team communication using high level carotene

Communication plays an important role to deliver the correct information. However, the communication became challenging especially for agile software teams, which are in geographical distributed. The problem arise when there are exchanging information using unstructured communication platform, misunderstanding on the information communicated and lack of documentation. The aim of this study is to propose a text classification technique for requirements identification in text messages. In this study, we adopted the cascade and cluster classification concept of Carotene that relies on the hash tag function. It classifies the text messages into requirements types instead of job title. This technique called as high-level carotene (HLC) technique that embedded into the tool to identify the functional requirement and non-functional requirements. The result shows that most of criterias evaluated have achieved more than 85% of effectiveness in identifying both of requirement in text messaging by using this technique.

ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING PRACTICES IN DISTRIBUTED AGILE ENVIRONMENT

Knowledge plays a key role in the software development process. Knowledge is necessarily required at all the phases of software development life cycle. Knowledge is the core resource, so organizations are now attempting to manage it in more efficient and systematic way. Knowledge sharing plays a very important role in the successful development of software. Knowledge sharing in distributed agile team is helpful in achieving the goals like better quality of products delivered on time and at lower cost. Our research analyzes the knowledge sharing practices in distributed environment and found the best implicit and explicit knowledge sharing practices.

Managing Versioning Activities to Support Tracking Progress of Distributed Agile Teams

Development Progress in agile methods is based on the amount of “working software” completed by team members. Changes to the source code might be introduced that affect the working software. Team members face difficulties in understanding and sharing changes that affect development progress especially in distributed projects. They may not recognise that there is an effect, or may not know who is affected by a change. In addition, changes are not perceived by the current tracking systems and hence if these changes affect development progress, they will not be discovered. This may lead to weak awareness of development progress and extra defects and delays. In this paper, we attempt to support tracking distributed agile projects by identifying and coordinating the impact of versioning activities on development progress, thereby ensuring that progress information is more consistent with the current software state. This will provide distributed agile teams with improved transparency of the actual progress.