Agile Practices Reduce Distance in Global Software Development

NTEREST IN GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELopment (GSD) is rapidly growing as the software industry experiences increasing globalization of business (Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001). In GSD, stakeholders from different national and organizational cultures and time zones are involved in developing software (Damian, 2002), and tasks at various stages of the software lifecycle may be separated and implemented at different geographic locations coordinated through the use of information and communication technologies (Sahay, 2003). As recognized by Sahay (2003), GSD allows for a range of new possibilities. For example, benefits such as the business advantage of having proximity to the market, the ability to exploit market opportunities through quick formation of virtual corporations and virtual teams, and the possibility to use time zone differences to achieve ’round-the-clock development have accelerated the interest in GSD (Herbsleb & Moitra, 2001). As a result, software development is increasingly a multisite, multicultural, globally distributed undertaking. However, although GSD opens new opportunities, there is little doubt that it presents new challenges (Damian, 2002; Sahay, 2003). As recognized by Herbsleb and Moitra (2001), physical separation among project members has diverse effects on many levels. For example, strategic issues include how to divide work between sites and how to handle organizational resistance. Often, individuals believe their jobs are threatened, they experience a loss of control, and they fear the possibility of relocation. Moreover, cultural issues, such as attitudes toward hierarchy, sense of time, communication styles, and need for structure, are different. Although these differences can be seen as enriching, they can also lead to misunderstandings among people. Cultural differences often exacerbate communication problems, and because software development requires rich communication (Perry et al., 1994), the lack or absence of this can lead to misalignment and rework. Finally, coordination and control issues need to be tackled. Without effective informationand knowledge-sharing mechanisms, the benefits of GSD cannot be exploited. All the issues mentioned above relate to temporal, geographical, and sociocultural distance, and their combination makes GSD a I HELENA HOLMSTRÖM is a research fellow with the University of Limerick, Ireland, and an assistant professor at the software engineering and management program at the IT University in Gothenburg, Sweden. She can be reached at helena.holmstrom @ul.ie.