The Critical Communication Challenges Between Geographically Distributed Agile Development Teams: Empirical Findings

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-337
Author(s):  
Yehia Alzoubi ◽  
Asif Gill
Author(s):  
Sultan Alyahya ◽  
Ohoud Almughram

Abstract The integration of user-centered design (UCD) activities into agile information systems development has become more popular recently. Despite the fact that there are many ways the merging of UCD activities into agile development can be carried out, it has been widely recognized that coordinating design activities with development activities is one of the most common problems, especially in distributed environments where designers, developers and users are spread over several sites. The main approach to coordinate UCD activities with distributed agile development is the use of informal methods (e.g. communication through using video conference tools). In addition to the temporal, geographical and socio-cultural barriers associated with this type of methods, a major limitation is a lack of awareness of how UCD activities and development activities affect each other. Furthermore, some agile project management tools are integrated with design platforms but fail to provide the necessary coordination that helps team members understand how the design and development activities affect their daily work. This research aims to support the effective management of integrating UCD activities into distributed agile development by (i) identifying the key activity dependencies between UX design teams and development teams during distributed UCD/agile development and (ii) designing a computer-based system to provide coordination support through managing these activity dependencies. In order to achieve these objectives, two case studies are carried out. Our findings revealed 10 main dependencies between UCD design teams and development teams as shown by six types of activity. In addition, the participatory design approach shows that developing a computer-based system to manage seven of these selected dependencies is achievable.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 48-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keng Siau ◽  
Min Ling

Organizations increasingly depend on virtual teams in which geographically distributed individuals use sophisticated technology to interact and collaborate. With the advancement of mobile and wireless technology, mobile support for collaboration among virtual team members is becoming increasingly important and popular. In this research, we study the values of mobile support for virtual team members. Using the qualitative technique, Value-Focused Thinking approach, proposed by Keeney, we interviewed 30 subjects who were involved in information systems development teams and asked them the values of mobile support for virtual collaboration. This study uses Alter's Work Systems Theory as the conceptual foundation.


Author(s):  
Jan Pries-Heje ◽  
Lene Pries-Heje

An interview study focusing on online collaboration in geographically distributed IT development teams in Danske Bank revealed seven problem areas. To cope with the problems the authors applied a design science research approach to construct a conceptual framework for improving online collaboration. The conceptual framework combines a six-phase teambuilding model with six elements of social capital. Thus, in each phase of teambuilding, the online collaborators aim at building up all six elements of social capital. The complete six-by-six framework was successfully tried and diffused throughout Danske Bank. This chapter gives an account of the framework content and the results from the evaluation.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Wasim Bhatti ◽  
Ali Ahsan

Global software development, an emerging software development methodology within a technology-enabled environment has recently received increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite the fact that the lack of effective communication is a major challenge of globally distributed teams, communication research related to the scale development is still very limited in existing literature. Considering the communication challenges and increasing need to measure the effectiveness of communication, this research is focused to develop a scale for “Effective Communication” for globally distributed software development teams. Systematic literature review is performed to identify the best practices of effective communication for the development of “Effective Communication” scale. A questionnaire survey consisting of 29 items is administered in globally distributed software development teams. Confirmatory factor analysis and statistical results depicted that the four-factor model (e.g. stakeholders' involvement, acculturation, usage of appropriate tools and technology, and information availability) is more parsimonious and an optimal model fit.


Author(s):  
Gabriela N. Aranda ◽  
Aurora Vizcaíno ◽  
Alejandra Cechich ◽  
Mario Piattini

Failures during the elicitation process have been usually attributed to the difficulty of the development team in working on a cooperative basis (Togneri, Falbo, & de Menezes, 2002), but today there are other points that have to be considered. In order to save costs, modern software organizations tend to have their software development team geographically distributed, so distance between members becomes one of the most important issues added to the traditional problems of the requirement elicitation process (Brooks, 1987; Loucopoulos & Karakostas, 1995). So far, literature has widely analysed real life Global Software Development (GSD) projects and pointed out the main problems that affect such environments, especially related to communication. As a complementary view, we have focused our research on analysing how cognitive characteristics can affect people interaction in GSD projects, especially during the requirement elicitation process, where communication becomes crucial. In this article, we present the main characteristics of requirements elicitation in GSD projects and introduce a cognitive-based requirement elicitation methodology for such environments.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Wasim Bhatti ◽  
Ali Ahsan

Global software development, an emerging software development methodology within a technology-enabled environment has recently received increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite the fact that the lack of effective communication is a major challenge of globally distributed teams, communication research related to the scale development is still very limited in existing literature. Considering the communication challenges and increasing need to measure the effectiveness of communication, this research is focused to develop a scale for “Effective Communication” for globally distributed software development teams. Systematic literature review is performed to identify the best practices of effective communication for the development of “Effective Communication” scale. A questionnaire survey consisting of 29 items is administered in globally distributed software development teams. Confirmatory factor analysis and statistical results depicted that the four-factor model (e.g. stakeholders' involvement, acculturation, usage of appropriate tools and technology, and information availability) is more parsimonious and an optimal model fit.


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