- The document examines the application of agile practices in software teams distributed across locations in Austria and Germany. It analyzes interviews with representatives from nine teams to identify challenges and benefits of using agile methods with low geographical distribution.
- Major challenges identified include technical obstacles, differences in language abilities hindering communication, and coordinating across sites. Benefits include improved collaboration and more effective information sharing.
- Based on the analysis, the document derives seven recommendations for distributed teams with low geographical distance, such as periodically meeting face-to-face to build relationships and share information.
Study of decentralization in construction companies keralaIAEME Publication
This document summarizes a study on decentralization in construction companies in Kerala, India. It discusses how decentralization can benefit construction companies by encouraging new ideas, better decision-making through information sharing, and increased employee motivation. However, over-decentralization may lead to inconsistent decisions if employees lack proper training and knowledge of company-wide issues. The study involved surveying employees at 30 construction companies using questionnaires to analyze how decentralization influences decision-making abilities. The results were statistically tested to evaluate the impact of decentralization at different company sizes.
Information system project management (IT - project) is a complex iterative process. An important role for the development of complex IT projects plays records of the development lifecycle (LC). The article presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the work on the creation of IT - projects based on two modified models of the life cycle: cascade and spiral. Analysis of the effectiveness of the management of the IT project was implemented on the basis of simulation. The modeling was carried out on the basis of Any Ljgic tools on the example of development of geoinformation system (GIS). It is shown that it is advisable to design GIS on the basis of a modified spiral LC with splitting of the flow of requirements at the input. The peculiarity of the proposed study is to take into account the requirements in the form of communicative interactions of different types. Under the communicative interactions are understood all the interactions between the subjects of the process of creating an IT-project: verbal and non - verbal, carried out on the basis of CASE-means
Information system project management (IT - project) is a complex iterative process. An important role for the development of complex IT projects plays records of the development lifecycle (LC). The article presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the work on the creation of IT - projects based on two modified models of the life cycle: cascade and spiral. Analysis of the effectiveness of the management of the IT project was implemented on the basis of simulation. The modeling was carried out on the basis of Any Ljgic tools on the example of development of geoinformation system (GIS). It is shown that it is advisable to design GIS on the basis of a modified spiral LC with splitting of the flow of requirements at the input. The peculiarity of the proposed study is to take into account the requirements in the form of communicative interactions of different types. Under the communicative interactions are understood all the interactions between the subjects of the process of creating an IT-project: verbal and non - verbal, carried out on the basis of CASE-means.
This document discusses barriers to effective collaboration in global virtual teams. It finds that the top three barriers are: 1) an inability to speak a common language well enough to get subtleties, 2) time zone differences, and 3) a lack of cultural understanding. Language barriers can lead to misunderstandings, as can a lack of non-verbal cues without face-to-face interaction. Differences in communication and decision-making styles between cultures also pose challenges. While virtual teams provide benefits like access to diverse skills and lower costs, overcoming these barriers through strategies like appointing cultural brokers and using video conferencing is important for team success.
Computers have transformed our lives; they have changed the way the humans perceive and interact with the world; however, computers do not act by their own, all of them require of commands to work, called software. Creating software requires trained and specialized personnel in the field, such as Managers, which must have skills that allow them to successfully coordinate the development of projects. This research aims to show the abilities that senior management has and which of these are more frequently exhibit in companies that develop automotive embedded software in Mexico, all this in the opinion of the Project Leaders.
A laboratory for teaching object oriented thinkingHome
The document describes using CRC (Class, Responsibility, Collaborator) cards to teach object-oriented design and thinking. CRC cards characterize objects with their class name, responsibilities, and collaborators written on index cards. The cards allow designers to physically organize objects and see relationships. The authors have found CRC cards successful in teaching both novice and experienced programmers about object-oriented concepts and designing complex systems. Teachers guide design through scenarios and encourage identifying with objects by holding their cards during discussions.
This document discusses risks associated with non-standard forms of civil engineering consulting services. It begins with background on risk management and risk assessment processes. It then describes a study conducted with 14 engineering consulting firms to identify risks in non-standard consulting services. The study used case studies and questionnaires to develop a Risk Breakdown Structure classifying risks by category, factor and attribute. The highest risks were related to quality of services and design activities. Loss of reputation from risks was seen as having the most severe potential impact on consultants. The proposed Risk Assessment Framework provides a tool for consultants to manage risks associated with non-standard services.
This document discusses challenges of agile software development based on a literature review. It identifies three main challenges: the vague definition and principles of agile, the lack of support for complex environments, and the gap between academia and industry. The review examines papers that explore revising agile principles, tailoring agile for distributed teams, and collecting challenges from practitioners to compare to research topics. It concludes by calling for further refinement of principles, hybrid agile-traditional methods, and reducing the divide between research and industry needs.
Study of decentralization in construction companies keralaIAEME Publication
This document summarizes a study on decentralization in construction companies in Kerala, India. It discusses how decentralization can benefit construction companies by encouraging new ideas, better decision-making through information sharing, and increased employee motivation. However, over-decentralization may lead to inconsistent decisions if employees lack proper training and knowledge of company-wide issues. The study involved surveying employees at 30 construction companies using questionnaires to analyze how decentralization influences decision-making abilities. The results were statistically tested to evaluate the impact of decentralization at different company sizes.
Information system project management (IT - project) is a complex iterative process. An important role for the development of complex IT projects plays records of the development lifecycle (LC). The article presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the work on the creation of IT - projects based on two modified models of the life cycle: cascade and spiral. Analysis of the effectiveness of the management of the IT project was implemented on the basis of simulation. The modeling was carried out on the basis of Any Ljgic tools on the example of development of geoinformation system (GIS). It is shown that it is advisable to design GIS on the basis of a modified spiral LC with splitting of the flow of requirements at the input. The peculiarity of the proposed study is to take into account the requirements in the form of communicative interactions of different types. Under the communicative interactions are understood all the interactions between the subjects of the process of creating an IT-project: verbal and non - verbal, carried out on the basis of CASE-means
Information system project management (IT - project) is a complex iterative process. An important role for the development of complex IT projects plays records of the development lifecycle (LC). The article presents an analysis of the effectiveness of the work on the creation of IT - projects based on two modified models of the life cycle: cascade and spiral. Analysis of the effectiveness of the management of the IT project was implemented on the basis of simulation. The modeling was carried out on the basis of Any Ljgic tools on the example of development of geoinformation system (GIS). It is shown that it is advisable to design GIS on the basis of a modified spiral LC with splitting of the flow of requirements at the input. The peculiarity of the proposed study is to take into account the requirements in the form of communicative interactions of different types. Under the communicative interactions are understood all the interactions between the subjects of the process of creating an IT-project: verbal and non - verbal, carried out on the basis of CASE-means.
This document discusses barriers to effective collaboration in global virtual teams. It finds that the top three barriers are: 1) an inability to speak a common language well enough to get subtleties, 2) time zone differences, and 3) a lack of cultural understanding. Language barriers can lead to misunderstandings, as can a lack of non-verbal cues without face-to-face interaction. Differences in communication and decision-making styles between cultures also pose challenges. While virtual teams provide benefits like access to diverse skills and lower costs, overcoming these barriers through strategies like appointing cultural brokers and using video conferencing is important for team success.
Computers have transformed our lives; they have changed the way the humans perceive and interact with the world; however, computers do not act by their own, all of them require of commands to work, called software. Creating software requires trained and specialized personnel in the field, such as Managers, which must have skills that allow them to successfully coordinate the development of projects. This research aims to show the abilities that senior management has and which of these are more frequently exhibit in companies that develop automotive embedded software in Mexico, all this in the opinion of the Project Leaders.
A laboratory for teaching object oriented thinkingHome
The document describes using CRC (Class, Responsibility, Collaborator) cards to teach object-oriented design and thinking. CRC cards characterize objects with their class name, responsibilities, and collaborators written on index cards. The cards allow designers to physically organize objects and see relationships. The authors have found CRC cards successful in teaching both novice and experienced programmers about object-oriented concepts and designing complex systems. Teachers guide design through scenarios and encourage identifying with objects by holding their cards during discussions.
This document discusses risks associated with non-standard forms of civil engineering consulting services. It begins with background on risk management and risk assessment processes. It then describes a study conducted with 14 engineering consulting firms to identify risks in non-standard consulting services. The study used case studies and questionnaires to develop a Risk Breakdown Structure classifying risks by category, factor and attribute. The highest risks were related to quality of services and design activities. Loss of reputation from risks was seen as having the most severe potential impact on consultants. The proposed Risk Assessment Framework provides a tool for consultants to manage risks associated with non-standard services.
This document discusses challenges of agile software development based on a literature review. It identifies three main challenges: the vague definition and principles of agile, the lack of support for complex environments, and the gap between academia and industry. The review examines papers that explore revising agile principles, tailoring agile for distributed teams, and collecting challenges from practitioners to compare to research topics. It concludes by calling for further refinement of principles, hybrid agile-traditional methods, and reducing the divide between research and industry needs.
HYBRID PRACTICES IN GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEWijseajournal
Although agile methods in their purest way fit several companies, it has been a challenge to perform them in environments with distributed teams developing large software applications. Contractual items, for projects under development for external organizations, introduce additional complexities for pure agilebased approaches. The majority of global teams and companies use hybrid development practices that combine different development methods and frameworks. This research provides results from an empirical field study on how the hybrids practices are adopted in Global Software Development (GSD) projects. A systematic literature review was conducted to capture the status of combining agile with plan-driven in GSD projects. The results were limited to peer-reviewed conference papers or journal articles, published between 2001 and 2020. The present study selected 37 papers from five different bibliographic databases. In the end, 16 practices were summarized and described as hybrid by GSD projects. Based on the findings of this study, the authors can conclude that the contribution of this study is not only limited to identifying how hybrid development practices are applied in GSD but also allowing that practitioners can have a basis for adapting their development methods.
Academic leadership journal .management challengespdfNader Ale Ebrahim
This document discusses virtual teams and their management challenges. It begins by defining virtual teams as groups of geographically dispersed workers brought together through information technologies to accomplish organizational tasks. It then outlines some of the key advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams, such as reduced costs but also challenges with trust and cultural diversity. The document also compares virtual and traditional co-located teams. Finally, it discusses some of the main management challenges of virtual teams, such as effectively sharing knowledge, managing conflicts, and cultural differences across the dispersed team members.
Does Distributed Development Affect Software Quality? An Empirical Case Study...Daniel Agaba
This document summarizes a study that examines the impact of distributed development on software quality using data from the development of Windows Vista. The study compares failures of components developed by distributed teams to those developed by collocated teams.
The study finds only a small difference in failures between distributed and collocated components, and the difference becomes negligible when controlling for team size. It also examines complexity and maintenance characteristics and finds little difference between distributed and collocated components. Further, the Windows Vista development process utilized practices that may mitigate challenges of distributed development.
The document discusses the context of global software development (GSD), highlighting key challenges, best practices, and benefits based on a review of past research. Some major challenges of GSD include poor communication, lack of trust and coordination due to factors like cultural and time zone differences. Establishing trust between client and vendor organizations is important. The review also identifies best practices for GSD, such as cultural understanding and clear development processes. Benefits of GSD include lower costs, faster delivery, and access to skilled resources globally, though issues remain that more research is needed to address challenges on the vendor side of GSD relationships.
In today's economy, enterprises require knowledge more than ever before. Employees are being classified through their skill set and experience, where the tacit knowledge of individuals is the key factor. The effect of knowledge hunger can be easily seen in agile software development teams. To sustain the quality permanence of software development, it is essential to transform individuals' tacit knowledge to core organizational knowledge. To achieve this goal, every software development process utilizes different knowledge sharing and creation approaches. In this paper, knowledge sharing issues are surveyed and categorized into: 1) sociological issues, 2) documentation issues, and 3) implementation issues with/without pair programming. Finally, a proposed technique, Knowledge Temple, is introduced as feasible improvement to well-known knowledge sharing problems for small agile software development teams.
An Sna-Bi Based System for Evaluating Virtual Teams: A Software Development P...ijcsit
The dependence of today's collaborative projects on knowledge acquisition and information dissemination
emphasizes the importance of minimizing communication breakdowns. However, as organizations are
increasingly relying on virtual teams to deliver better and faster results, communication issues come to the
forefront of project managers' concerns. This is particularly palpable in software development projects
which are increasingly virtual and knowledge-consuming as they require continuous generation and
upgrade of shared information and knowledge. In a previous work, we proposed an SNA-BI based system
(Covirtsys) that supplements the Analytics modules of the collaborative platform in order to offer a
complementary analysis of communication flows through a network perspective. This paper concerns the
application of this system on a software development project virtual team and shows how it can bring new
insights that could help overcome communication issues among team members.
ENHANCING DELPHI METHOD WITH ALGORITHMIC ESTIMATES FOR SOFTWARE EFFORT ESTIMA...ijseajournal
Literature review shows that more accurate software effort and cost estimation methods are needed for
software project management success. Expert judgment and algorithmic model estimation are two
predominant methods discussed in the literature. Both are reported almost at the comparable level of
accuracy performance. The combination of the two methods is suggested to increase the estimation accuracy.
Delphi method is an encouraging structured expert judgment method for software effort group estimation
but surprisingly little was reported in the literature. The objective of this study is to test if the Delphi estimates
will be more accurate if the participants in the Delphi process are exposed to the algorithmic estimates. A
Delphi experiment where the participants in the Delphi process were exposed to three algorithmic estimates
–Function Points, COCOMO estimates, and Use Case Points, was therefore conducted. The findings show
that the Delphi estimates are slightly more accurate than the statistical combination of individual expert
estimates, but they are not statistically significant. However, the Delphi estimates are statistically significant
more accurate than the individual estimates. The results also show that the Delphi estimates are slightly less
optimistic than the statistical combination of individual expert estimates but they are not statistically
significant either. The adapted Delphi experiment shows a promising technique for improving the software
cost estimation accuracy.
IT Project Management and Virtual Teams Catherine M. Beise, .docxvrickens
IT Project Management and Virtual Teams
Catherine M. Beise, PhD
Salisbury University
Salisbury, MD 21801 USA
01-410-548-4034
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Project management methods and tools are increasingly relevant
as today’s globalized organizations accomplish more of their
goals using cross-functional, and often cross-cultural,
geographically dispersed, project teams. The increased diversity
of skills, knowledge, cultures, and perspectives of these project
teams can potentially have both positive and negative influences
on group processes and outcomes. The question that this
research-in-progress intends to address is: To what extent can and
do project management methods and tools benefit diverse virtual
teams while mitigating its challenges? In order to begin to answer
this question, this paper presents relevant background, a research
model, a methodology (currently in progress), and potential
contributions. The initial methodology involves a study of IT
project teams working on a common database design project
whose members are using electronic tools to communicate,
collaborate, and coordinate. The results of the study should
provide useful information to practitioners and researchers
regarding project management and virtual teams.
Categories and Subject Descriptors:
K-6.1 [Project and People Management]
General Terms:
Management, Performance, Design
Keywords:
Project management, virtual teams, software teams.
1. INTRODUCTION
Much of the work done in today’s increasingly geographically
distributed organizations is accomplished by work groups, often
formalized as project teams. In order to achieve the assigned tasks
and goals, a cross-section of skills, knowledge, and perspectives is
often required. Thus, team members may be selected from
multiple functional areas, from different locations, and often from
diverse demographic and cultural backgrounds. Project teams are
often managed using formal project management methodologies,
such as those derived from the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK) [1]. Such methods have evolved due to the
need to monitor and control complex projects, and to maintain
budgets and schedules while ensuring quality, which have all
grown in importance as critical success factors in the competitive
global workplace.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise,
or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee.
SIGMIS’04, April 22–24, 2004, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Copyright 2004 ACM 1-58113-847-4/04/0004…$5.00.
At the same time, the globalization of project teams has increased
demographic and cultural diversity, which can create ...
CRESUS-T: A COLLABORATIVE REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION SUPPORT TOOLijseajournal
Communicating an organisation's requirements in a semantically consistent and understandable manner
and then reflecting the potential impact of those requirements on the IT infrastructure presents a major
challenge among stakeholders. Initial research findings indicate a desire among business executives for a
tool that allows them to communicate organisational changes using natural language and a model of the IT
infrastructure that supports those changes. Building on a detailed analysis and evaluation of these findings,
the innovative CRESUS-T support tool was designed and implemented. The purpose of this research was to
investigate to what extent CRESUS-T both aids communication in the development of a shared
understanding and supports collaborative requirements elicitation to bring about organisational, and
associated IT infrastructural, change. In order to determine the extent shared understanding was fostered,
the support tool was evaluated in a case study of a business process for the roll out of the IT software
image at a third level educational institution. Statistical analysis showed that the CRESUS-T support tool
fostered shared understanding in the case study, through increased communication. Shared understanding
is also manifested in the creation of two knowledge representation artefacts namely, a requirements model
and the IT infrastructure model. The CRESUS-T support tool will be useful to requirements engineers and
business analysts that have to gather requirements asynchronously.
Selection criterion and implementation of case tools in gap analysis towaIAEME Publication
This document discusses gaps in distributed software development projects and proposes using CASE tools to analyze these gaps. It first defines what gaps are and provides examples of common gaps in distributed projects, such as geographical distance, time zone differences, and inadequate communication. The document then discusses how gap analysis is used to compare a project's actual performance to expected performance to identify differences. It proposes using CASE tools to help conduct gap analysis for distributed projects in order to identify limitations and differences between the current and desired states of development. Traditional and SWOT analysis approaches to gap analysis are also briefly described.
JuliaThere is an art to projecting management. Knowing how to m.docxtawnyataylor528
Julia:
There is an art to projecting management. Knowing how to move a group of people who all has a common goal but all have a different point of views takes some skills this person will also need systematization. But along with a person to help everyone stay focus and moving the technology that is used for communication is also very important. Making sure everyone can communicate and send files that everyone can case and edit can help keep the project moving forward. Picking the right software from the beginning will make the sharing of information easy. Now for Brook’s Law, I believe if the right people are added and understand the objective this may not slow down the project. Adding a programmer or someone else to help write the simple code like for a table whiles the other people who have been on the project creates the more complex code is a great use of adding people. Everything about project management is about placement and communication.
Mantilla, Gloria E. Vela. "Community Systematization And Learning: Project Management For Change." Community Development Journal 45.3 (2010): 367-379. Political Science Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2016
Charlene:
Hi Class,
“Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques applied to project activities in order to meet the project requirements. Project management is a process that includes planning, putting the project plan into action, and measuring progress and performance.” I think a good project manager makes sure the project is completed within the time scheduled, within budget and good quality. While it is rare that a project goes without any mishaps, a good project manager would be able to catch those issues early if he/she is communicating and writing things down as the project progresses.
I think Fredric Brooks book The Mythical Man-Monthdoes have some truth to it still to this day especially regarding communication. While technology has advanced and there are smarter people, if the communication is not clear on how a project should go, workers' interpretations of what they thought was stated, could lead to a disaster. Knowledgeable, skilled workers who are not afraid to ask questions is the key.
http://cnx.org/content/m31508/latest/
Charlene
S U M M E R 2 0 0 9 V O L . 5 0 N O . 4
R E P R I N T N U M B E R 5 0 4 1 2
Frank Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst
How to Manage
Virtual Teams
SMR322
This document is authorized for use only in Leadership and Teams by Dev Team from July 2012 to January 2015.
SUMMER 2009 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 63COURTESY OF SAP
TEAMS ARE THE typical building blocks of an organization: They provide companies with
the means to combine the various skills, talents and perspectives of a group of individuals to achieve
corporate goals. In the past, managers used to colocate team members because of the high levels of
interdependencies that are inherent in group work. Recently, though, more and more ...
A FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING USABILITY PRACTICES INTO SMALL-SIZED SOFTWARE DEV...ijseajournal
Usability now appears to be a highly important attribute for software quality; it is a critical factor that
needs to be considered by every software-development organization when developing software to improve
customer satisfaction and increase competition in the market. There exists a lack of a reference model or
framework for small-sized software-development organizations to indicate which usability practices should
be implemented, and where in the system-development life cycle they need to be considered. We offer
developers who have the objective of integrating usability practices into their development life cycle a
framework that characterizes 10 selected user-centered design (UCD) methods in relation to five relevant
criteria based on some ISO factors that have an effect on the selection of methods (ISO/TR16982). The
selection of the methods for inclusion in the framework responds to these organizations’ needs; and we
selected basic methods that are recommended, cost-effective, simple to plan and apply, and easy to learn by
developers; and which can be applied when time, resources, skills, and expertise are limited. We favor
methods that are generally applicable across a wide range of development environments. The selected
methods are organized in the framework according to the stages in the development process where they
might be applied. The only requirement for the existing development life cycle is that it to be based on an
iterative approach.
AGILE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE INGLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT:SYSTEMA...ijseajournal
In recent years, software development companies started to adopt Global Software Development (GSD) to
explore the benefits of this approach, mainly cost reduction. However, the GSD environment also brings
more complexity and challenges. Some challenges are related to communication aspects like cultural differences, time zone, and language. This paper is the first step in an extensive study to understand if the
software architecture can ease communication in GSD environments. We conducted a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to catalog relevant studies about software architecture and GSD teams and identify
potential practices for use in the software industry. This paper’s findings contribute to the GSD body of
knowledge by exploring the impact of software architecture strategy on the GSD environment. It presents
hypotheses regarding the relationship between software architecture and GSD challenges, which will guide
future research.
EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF AGILE-DEVELOPED SOFTWARE SYSTEM IN JORDAN...ijbiss
The document discusses a study of the adoption of agile practices in three telecommunications companies in Jordan. It finds that:
1) The companies used some agile practices like continuous integration and collective code ownership but did not follow full agile methodologies.
2) Adoption levels varied across practices and companies, with measurement by working code and coding standards seeing higher adoption.
3) Experiences with practices were mixed, with benefits seen in visibility of progress but challenges in refactoring large code bases.
Empirical Study of the Evolution of Agile-developed Software System in Jordan...ijbiss
The document discusses a study of the adoption of agile practices in three telecommunications companies in Jordan. It finds that:
1) The companies used some agile practices like continuous integration and collective code ownership but did not follow full agile methodologies.
2) Adoption levels varied across practices and companies, with measurement of progress through working code seeing higher adoption.
3) Experiences with practices were mixed, with continuous integration and collective ownership more widely used than pair programming.
ORGANIZING THE INTERNATIONAL PROJECT Chapter 6.docxvannagoforth
ORGANIZING THE
INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
Chapter 6
THE CHALLENGE OF ORGANIZING AN INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
Purpose of organizing international projects:
Reducing complexity by simplification of structure and
organizational design.
Forms of organizing an international project:
Functional structure.
‘Projectized’ structure.
Matrix structure.
Virtual structure.
‘Organizing the project’ is a set of activities that have to be
finished in the planning phase of the project.
2
SELECTION OF SUITABLE PROJECT STRUCTURE
The following factors need to be considered with regard to the
selection of the most suitable project structure:
Size and duration of project.
Strategic importance of project.
Novelty and need for innovation.
Need for integration.
Environmental complexity.
Budget and time constraints.
Project location.
3
Chief Executive
Head of Production Head of MarketingHead of R&D
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Project
Project coordination 4
Example of a functional
project structure
Chief Executive
Head of Production Head of MarketingHead of R&D
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Project Manager
PM Team
Member
PM Team
Member
PM Team
Member
Project
Team
Member
5
Example of a ‘projectized’ structure
Chief Executive
Engineer-
ing
Finance Marketing
Human
Resources
Others
Consul-
tants
Suppliers
Project 1
Operations Controlling
Project 2
Project 3
Project
Manager
F
u
n
c
ti
o
n
a
l
re
s
p
o
n
s
ib
il
it
y
Project responsibility
6
Example of a matrix structure
CULTURAL IMPACT ON PROJECT ORGANIZATION (1)
Organizational structures have the following purposes:
Help accomplish project goals.
Provide project members with a frame of orientation, hierarchies, and
reporting lines.
Structures satisfy needs of belonging and esteem. Those can differ
between individuals, but also between national cultures.
Keep in mind the cultural embeddedness of matrix structures and
responsibility charts, both based on:
Low power distance.
Low uncertainty avoidance.
Individualism.
Strong task orientation.
Strong achievement orientation.
Sequential way of working.
7
Individuals from equality-oriented cultures tend to
prefer flat and lean organizational structures. People
from hierarchy-oriented cultures tend to favour
pyramid-like tall organizations with a high degree of
formalization and centralization.
Equality Hierarchy
Individuals from group-oriented cultures tend to work
better in permanent functional organizational
structures because of the continuity to work in the
same group. People from individualistic cultures tend
to welcome temporary organizational structures like ...
An Agile Software Development FrameworkWaqas Tariq
Agility in software projects can be attained when software development methodologies attain to external factors and provide a framework internally for keeping software development projects focused. Developer practices are the most important factor that has to cope with the challenges. Agile development assumes a project context where the customer is actively collaborating with the development team. The greatest problem agile teams face is too little involvement from the customer. For a project to be agile, the developers have to cope with this lack of collaboration. Embracing changing requirements is not enough to make agile methods cope with business and technology changes. This paper provides a conceptual framework for tailoring agile methodologies to face different challenges. The framework is comprised of three factors, namely, developer practices, customer collaboration, and predicting change
AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING FRAMEWORKS FOR INTEGRATING FRAGMENTED INFORMATION SYS...ijistjournal
Literatures show that there are several structured integration frameworks which emerged with the aim of facilitating application integration. But weakness and strength of these frameworks are not known. This paper aimed at reviewing these frameworks with the focus on identifying their weakness and strength. To accomplish this, recommended comparison factors were identified and used to compare these frameworks. Findings shows that most of these structure frameworks are custom based on their motives. They focus on integrating applications from different sectors within an organization for the purpose of eliminating communication inefficiencies. There is no framework which guides application’s integrators on goals of integrations, outcomes of integration, outputs of integration and skills which will be required for types of applications expected to be integrated. The study recommended further study on integration framework especial on designing unstructured framework which will support and guide application’s integrators with consideration on consumer’s surrounding environment.
AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING FRAMEWORKS FOR INTEGRATING FRAGMENTED INFORMATION SYS...ijistjournal
Literatures show that there are several structured integration frameworks which emerged with the aim of facilitating pplication integration. But weakness and strength of these frameworks are not known. This
paper aimed at reviewing these frameworks with the focus on identifying their weakness and strength. Toaccomplish this, recommended comparison factors were identified and used to compare these frameworks.Findings shows that most of these structure frameworks are custom based on their motives. They focus onintegrating applications from different sectors within an organization for the purpose of eliminating communication inefficiencies. There is no framework which guides pplication’s integrators on goals of integrations, outcomes of integration, outputs of integration and skills which will be required for
types of applications expected to be integrated. The study recommended further study on integration
framework especial on designing unstructured framework which will support and guide application’s
integrators with consideration on consumer’s surrounding environment.
The document discusses applying collaborative technologies to software development. It outlines the contents, which include introducing collaboration, discussing problems with non-collaborative work, and describing the proposed collaborative application's attributes and capabilities. The document aims to design an architecture that enables easy collaboration between distributed software engineers to reduce costs and improve productivity.
Home security is of paramount importance in today's world, where we rely more on technology, home
security is crucial. Using technology to make homes safer and easier to control from anywhere is
important. Home security is important for the occupant’s safety. In this paper, we came up with a low cost,
AI based model home security system. The system has a user-friendly interface, allowing users to start
model training and face detection with simple keyboard commands. Our goal is to introduce an innovative
home security system using facial recognition technology. Unlike traditional systems, this system trains
and saves images of friends and family members. The system scans this folder to recognize familiar faces
and provides real-time monitoring. If an unfamiliar face is detected, it promptly sends an email alert,
ensuring a proactive response to potential security threats.
In the era of data-driven warfare, the integration of big data and machine learning (ML) techniques has
become paramount for enhancing defence capabilities. This research report delves into the applications of
big data and ML in the defence sector, exploring their potential to revolutionize intelligence gathering,
strategic decision-making, and operational efficiency. By leveraging vast amounts of data and advanced
algorithms, these technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for threat detection, predictive analysis,
and optimized resource allocation. However, their adoption also raises critical concerns regarding data
privacy, ethical implications, and the potential for misuse. This report aims to provide a comprehensive
understanding of the current state of big data and ML in defence, while examining the challenges and
ethical considerations that must be addressed to ensure responsible and effective implementation.
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HYBRID PRACTICES IN GLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEWijseajournal
Although agile methods in their purest way fit several companies, it has been a challenge to perform them in environments with distributed teams developing large software applications. Contractual items, for projects under development for external organizations, introduce additional complexities for pure agilebased approaches. The majority of global teams and companies use hybrid development practices that combine different development methods and frameworks. This research provides results from an empirical field study on how the hybrids practices are adopted in Global Software Development (GSD) projects. A systematic literature review was conducted to capture the status of combining agile with plan-driven in GSD projects. The results were limited to peer-reviewed conference papers or journal articles, published between 2001 and 2020. The present study selected 37 papers from five different bibliographic databases. In the end, 16 practices were summarized and described as hybrid by GSD projects. Based on the findings of this study, the authors can conclude that the contribution of this study is not only limited to identifying how hybrid development practices are applied in GSD but also allowing that practitioners can have a basis for adapting their development methods.
Academic leadership journal .management challengespdfNader Ale Ebrahim
This document discusses virtual teams and their management challenges. It begins by defining virtual teams as groups of geographically dispersed workers brought together through information technologies to accomplish organizational tasks. It then outlines some of the key advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams, such as reduced costs but also challenges with trust and cultural diversity. The document also compares virtual and traditional co-located teams. Finally, it discusses some of the main management challenges of virtual teams, such as effectively sharing knowledge, managing conflicts, and cultural differences across the dispersed team members.
Does Distributed Development Affect Software Quality? An Empirical Case Study...Daniel Agaba
This document summarizes a study that examines the impact of distributed development on software quality using data from the development of Windows Vista. The study compares failures of components developed by distributed teams to those developed by collocated teams.
The study finds only a small difference in failures between distributed and collocated components, and the difference becomes negligible when controlling for team size. It also examines complexity and maintenance characteristics and finds little difference between distributed and collocated components. Further, the Windows Vista development process utilized practices that may mitigate challenges of distributed development.
The document discusses the context of global software development (GSD), highlighting key challenges, best practices, and benefits based on a review of past research. Some major challenges of GSD include poor communication, lack of trust and coordination due to factors like cultural and time zone differences. Establishing trust between client and vendor organizations is important. The review also identifies best practices for GSD, such as cultural understanding and clear development processes. Benefits of GSD include lower costs, faster delivery, and access to skilled resources globally, though issues remain that more research is needed to address challenges on the vendor side of GSD relationships.
In today's economy, enterprises require knowledge more than ever before. Employees are being classified through their skill set and experience, where the tacit knowledge of individuals is the key factor. The effect of knowledge hunger can be easily seen in agile software development teams. To sustain the quality permanence of software development, it is essential to transform individuals' tacit knowledge to core organizational knowledge. To achieve this goal, every software development process utilizes different knowledge sharing and creation approaches. In this paper, knowledge sharing issues are surveyed and categorized into: 1) sociological issues, 2) documentation issues, and 3) implementation issues with/without pair programming. Finally, a proposed technique, Knowledge Temple, is introduced as feasible improvement to well-known knowledge sharing problems for small agile software development teams.
An Sna-Bi Based System for Evaluating Virtual Teams: A Software Development P...ijcsit
The dependence of today's collaborative projects on knowledge acquisition and information dissemination
emphasizes the importance of minimizing communication breakdowns. However, as organizations are
increasingly relying on virtual teams to deliver better and faster results, communication issues come to the
forefront of project managers' concerns. This is particularly palpable in software development projects
which are increasingly virtual and knowledge-consuming as they require continuous generation and
upgrade of shared information and knowledge. In a previous work, we proposed an SNA-BI based system
(Covirtsys) that supplements the Analytics modules of the collaborative platform in order to offer a
complementary analysis of communication flows through a network perspective. This paper concerns the
application of this system on a software development project virtual team and shows how it can bring new
insights that could help overcome communication issues among team members.
ENHANCING DELPHI METHOD WITH ALGORITHMIC ESTIMATES FOR SOFTWARE EFFORT ESTIMA...ijseajournal
Literature review shows that more accurate software effort and cost estimation methods are needed for
software project management success. Expert judgment and algorithmic model estimation are two
predominant methods discussed in the literature. Both are reported almost at the comparable level of
accuracy performance. The combination of the two methods is suggested to increase the estimation accuracy.
Delphi method is an encouraging structured expert judgment method for software effort group estimation
but surprisingly little was reported in the literature. The objective of this study is to test if the Delphi estimates
will be more accurate if the participants in the Delphi process are exposed to the algorithmic estimates. A
Delphi experiment where the participants in the Delphi process were exposed to three algorithmic estimates
–Function Points, COCOMO estimates, and Use Case Points, was therefore conducted. The findings show
that the Delphi estimates are slightly more accurate than the statistical combination of individual expert
estimates, but they are not statistically significant. However, the Delphi estimates are statistically significant
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IT Project Management and Virtual Teams Catherine M. Beise, .docxvrickens
IT Project Management and Virtual Teams
Catherine M. Beise, PhD
Salisbury University
Salisbury, MD 21801 USA
01-410-548-4034
[email protected]
ABSTRACT
Project management methods and tools are increasingly relevant
as today’s globalized organizations accomplish more of their
goals using cross-functional, and often cross-cultural,
geographically dispersed, project teams. The increased diversity
of skills, knowledge, cultures, and perspectives of these project
teams can potentially have both positive and negative influences
on group processes and outcomes. The question that this
research-in-progress intends to address is: To what extent can and
do project management methods and tools benefit diverse virtual
teams while mitigating its challenges? In order to begin to answer
this question, this paper presents relevant background, a research
model, a methodology (currently in progress), and potential
contributions. The initial methodology involves a study of IT
project teams working on a common database design project
whose members are using electronic tools to communicate,
collaborate, and coordinate. The results of the study should
provide useful information to practitioners and researchers
regarding project management and virtual teams.
Categories and Subject Descriptors:
K-6.1 [Project and People Management]
General Terms:
Management, Performance, Design
Keywords:
Project management, virtual teams, software teams.
1. INTRODUCTION
Much of the work done in today’s increasingly geographically
distributed organizations is accomplished by work groups, often
formalized as project teams. In order to achieve the assigned tasks
and goals, a cross-section of skills, knowledge, and perspectives is
often required. Thus, team members may be selected from
multiple functional areas, from different locations, and often from
diverse demographic and cultural backgrounds. Project teams are
often managed using formal project management methodologies,
such as those derived from the Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK) [1]. Such methods have evolved due to the
need to monitor and control complex projects, and to maintain
budgets and schedules while ensuring quality, which have all
grown in importance as critical success factors in the competitive
global workplace.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise,
or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee.
SIGMIS’04, April 22–24, 2004, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Copyright 2004 ACM 1-58113-847-4/04/0004…$5.00.
At the same time, the globalization of project teams has increased
demographic and cultural diversity, which can create ...
CRESUS-T: A COLLABORATIVE REQUIREMENTS ELICITATION SUPPORT TOOLijseajournal
Communicating an organisation's requirements in a semantically consistent and understandable manner
and then reflecting the potential impact of those requirements on the IT infrastructure presents a major
challenge among stakeholders. Initial research findings indicate a desire among business executives for a
tool that allows them to communicate organisational changes using natural language and a model of the IT
infrastructure that supports those changes. Building on a detailed analysis and evaluation of these findings,
the innovative CRESUS-T support tool was designed and implemented. The purpose of this research was to
investigate to what extent CRESUS-T both aids communication in the development of a shared
understanding and supports collaborative requirements elicitation to bring about organisational, and
associated IT infrastructural, change. In order to determine the extent shared understanding was fostered,
the support tool was evaluated in a case study of a business process for the roll out of the IT software
image at a third level educational institution. Statistical analysis showed that the CRESUS-T support tool
fostered shared understanding in the case study, through increased communication. Shared understanding
is also manifested in the creation of two knowledge representation artefacts namely, a requirements model
and the IT infrastructure model. The CRESUS-T support tool will be useful to requirements engineers and
business analysts that have to gather requirements asynchronously.
Selection criterion and implementation of case tools in gap analysis towaIAEME Publication
This document discusses gaps in distributed software development projects and proposes using CASE tools to analyze these gaps. It first defines what gaps are and provides examples of common gaps in distributed projects, such as geographical distance, time zone differences, and inadequate communication. The document then discusses how gap analysis is used to compare a project's actual performance to expected performance to identify differences. It proposes using CASE tools to help conduct gap analysis for distributed projects in order to identify limitations and differences between the current and desired states of development. Traditional and SWOT analysis approaches to gap analysis are also briefly described.
JuliaThere is an art to projecting management. Knowing how to m.docxtawnyataylor528
Julia:
There is an art to projecting management. Knowing how to move a group of people who all has a common goal but all have a different point of views takes some skills this person will also need systematization. But along with a person to help everyone stay focus and moving the technology that is used for communication is also very important. Making sure everyone can communicate and send files that everyone can case and edit can help keep the project moving forward. Picking the right software from the beginning will make the sharing of information easy. Now for Brook’s Law, I believe if the right people are added and understand the objective this may not slow down the project. Adding a programmer or someone else to help write the simple code like for a table whiles the other people who have been on the project creates the more complex code is a great use of adding people. Everything about project management is about placement and communication.
Mantilla, Gloria E. Vela. "Community Systematization And Learning: Project Management For Change." Community Development Journal 45.3 (2010): 367-379. Political Science Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2016
Charlene:
Hi Class,
“Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques applied to project activities in order to meet the project requirements. Project management is a process that includes planning, putting the project plan into action, and measuring progress and performance.” I think a good project manager makes sure the project is completed within the time scheduled, within budget and good quality. While it is rare that a project goes without any mishaps, a good project manager would be able to catch those issues early if he/she is communicating and writing things down as the project progresses.
I think Fredric Brooks book The Mythical Man-Monthdoes have some truth to it still to this day especially regarding communication. While technology has advanced and there are smarter people, if the communication is not clear on how a project should go, workers' interpretations of what they thought was stated, could lead to a disaster. Knowledgeable, skilled workers who are not afraid to ask questions is the key.
http://cnx.org/content/m31508/latest/
Charlene
S U M M E R 2 0 0 9 V O L . 5 0 N O . 4
R E P R I N T N U M B E R 5 0 4 1 2
Frank Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst
How to Manage
Virtual Teams
SMR322
This document is authorized for use only in Leadership and Teams by Dev Team from July 2012 to January 2015.
SUMMER 2009 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 63COURTESY OF SAP
TEAMS ARE THE typical building blocks of an organization: They provide companies with
the means to combine the various skills, talents and perspectives of a group of individuals to achieve
corporate goals. In the past, managers used to colocate team members because of the high levels of
interdependencies that are inherent in group work. Recently, though, more and more ...
A FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING USABILITY PRACTICES INTO SMALL-SIZED SOFTWARE DEV...ijseajournal
Usability now appears to be a highly important attribute for software quality; it is a critical factor that
needs to be considered by every software-development organization when developing software to improve
customer satisfaction and increase competition in the market. There exists a lack of a reference model or
framework for small-sized software-development organizations to indicate which usability practices should
be implemented, and where in the system-development life cycle they need to be considered. We offer
developers who have the objective of integrating usability practices into their development life cycle a
framework that characterizes 10 selected user-centered design (UCD) methods in relation to five relevant
criteria based on some ISO factors that have an effect on the selection of methods (ISO/TR16982). The
selection of the methods for inclusion in the framework responds to these organizations’ needs; and we
selected basic methods that are recommended, cost-effective, simple to plan and apply, and easy to learn by
developers; and which can be applied when time, resources, skills, and expertise are limited. We favor
methods that are generally applicable across a wide range of development environments. The selected
methods are organized in the framework according to the stages in the development process where they
might be applied. The only requirement for the existing development life cycle is that it to be based on an
iterative approach.
AGILE SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE INGLOBAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT:SYSTEMA...ijseajournal
In recent years, software development companies started to adopt Global Software Development (GSD) to
explore the benefits of this approach, mainly cost reduction. However, the GSD environment also brings
more complexity and challenges. Some challenges are related to communication aspects like cultural differences, time zone, and language. This paper is the first step in an extensive study to understand if the
software architecture can ease communication in GSD environments. We conducted a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to catalog relevant studies about software architecture and GSD teams and identify
potential practices for use in the software industry. This paper’s findings contribute to the GSD body of
knowledge by exploring the impact of software architecture strategy on the GSD environment. It presents
hypotheses regarding the relationship between software architecture and GSD challenges, which will guide
future research.
EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE EVOLUTION OF AGILE-DEVELOPED SOFTWARE SYSTEM IN JORDAN...ijbiss
The document discusses a study of the adoption of agile practices in three telecommunications companies in Jordan. It finds that:
1) The companies used some agile practices like continuous integration and collective code ownership but did not follow full agile methodologies.
2) Adoption levels varied across practices and companies, with measurement by working code and coding standards seeing higher adoption.
3) Experiences with practices were mixed, with benefits seen in visibility of progress but challenges in refactoring large code bases.
Empirical Study of the Evolution of Agile-developed Software System in Jordan...ijbiss
The document discusses a study of the adoption of agile practices in three telecommunications companies in Jordan. It finds that:
1) The companies used some agile practices like continuous integration and collective code ownership but did not follow full agile methodologies.
2) Adoption levels varied across practices and companies, with measurement of progress through working code seeing higher adoption.
3) Experiences with practices were mixed, with continuous integration and collective ownership more widely used than pair programming.
ORGANIZING THE INTERNATIONAL PROJECT Chapter 6.docxvannagoforth
ORGANIZING THE
INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
Chapter 6
THE CHALLENGE OF ORGANIZING AN INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
Purpose of organizing international projects:
Reducing complexity by simplification of structure and
organizational design.
Forms of organizing an international project:
Functional structure.
‘Projectized’ structure.
Matrix structure.
Virtual structure.
‘Organizing the project’ is a set of activities that have to be
finished in the planning phase of the project.
2
SELECTION OF SUITABLE PROJECT STRUCTURE
The following factors need to be considered with regard to the
selection of the most suitable project structure:
Size and duration of project.
Strategic importance of project.
Novelty and need for innovation.
Need for integration.
Environmental complexity.
Budget and time constraints.
Project location.
3
Chief Executive
Head of Production Head of MarketingHead of R&D
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Project
Project coordination 4
Example of a functional
project structure
Chief Executive
Head of Production Head of MarketingHead of R&D
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Functional
Manager
Project Manager
PM Team
Member
PM Team
Member
PM Team
Member
Project
Team
Member
5
Example of a ‘projectized’ structure
Chief Executive
Engineer-
ing
Finance Marketing
Human
Resources
Others
Consul-
tants
Suppliers
Project 1
Operations Controlling
Project 2
Project 3
Project
Manager
F
u
n
c
ti
o
n
a
l
re
s
p
o
n
s
ib
il
it
y
Project responsibility
6
Example of a matrix structure
CULTURAL IMPACT ON PROJECT ORGANIZATION (1)
Organizational structures have the following purposes:
Help accomplish project goals.
Provide project members with a frame of orientation, hierarchies, and
reporting lines.
Structures satisfy needs of belonging and esteem. Those can differ
between individuals, but also between national cultures.
Keep in mind the cultural embeddedness of matrix structures and
responsibility charts, both based on:
Low power distance.
Low uncertainty avoidance.
Individualism.
Strong task orientation.
Strong achievement orientation.
Sequential way of working.
7
Individuals from equality-oriented cultures tend to
prefer flat and lean organizational structures. People
from hierarchy-oriented cultures tend to favour
pyramid-like tall organizations with a high degree of
formalization and centralization.
Equality Hierarchy
Individuals from group-oriented cultures tend to work
better in permanent functional organizational
structures because of the continuity to work in the
same group. People from individualistic cultures tend
to welcome temporary organizational structures like ...
An Agile Software Development FrameworkWaqas Tariq
Agility in software projects can be attained when software development methodologies attain to external factors and provide a framework internally for keeping software development projects focused. Developer practices are the most important factor that has to cope with the challenges. Agile development assumes a project context where the customer is actively collaborating with the development team. The greatest problem agile teams face is too little involvement from the customer. For a project to be agile, the developers have to cope with this lack of collaboration. Embracing changing requirements is not enough to make agile methods cope with business and technology changes. This paper provides a conceptual framework for tailoring agile methodologies to face different challenges. The framework is comprised of three factors, namely, developer practices, customer collaboration, and predicting change
AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING FRAMEWORKS FOR INTEGRATING FRAGMENTED INFORMATION SYS...ijistjournal
Literatures show that there are several structured integration frameworks which emerged with the aim of facilitating application integration. But weakness and strength of these frameworks are not known. This paper aimed at reviewing these frameworks with the focus on identifying their weakness and strength. To accomplish this, recommended comparison factors were identified and used to compare these frameworks. Findings shows that most of these structure frameworks are custom based on their motives. They focus on integrating applications from different sectors within an organization for the purpose of eliminating communication inefficiencies. There is no framework which guides application’s integrators on goals of integrations, outcomes of integration, outputs of integration and skills which will be required for types of applications expected to be integrated. The study recommended further study on integration framework especial on designing unstructured framework which will support and guide application’s integrators with consideration on consumer’s surrounding environment.
AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING FRAMEWORKS FOR INTEGRATING FRAGMENTED INFORMATION SYS...ijistjournal
Literatures show that there are several structured integration frameworks which emerged with the aim of facilitating pplication integration. But weakness and strength of these frameworks are not known. This
paper aimed at reviewing these frameworks with the focus on identifying their weakness and strength. Toaccomplish this, recommended comparison factors were identified and used to compare these frameworks.Findings shows that most of these structure frameworks are custom based on their motives. They focus onintegrating applications from different sectors within an organization for the purpose of eliminating communication inefficiencies. There is no framework which guides pplication’s integrators on goals of integrations, outcomes of integration, outputs of integration and skills which will be required for
types of applications expected to be integrated. The study recommended further study on integration
framework especial on designing unstructured framework which will support and guide application’s
integrators with consideration on consumer’s surrounding environment.
The document discusses applying collaborative technologies to software development. It outlines the contents, which include introducing collaboration, discussing problems with non-collaborative work, and describing the proposed collaborative application's attributes and capabilities. The document aims to design an architecture that enables easy collaboration between distributed software engineers to reduce costs and improve productivity.
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Home security is of paramount importance in today's world, where we rely more on technology, home
security is crucial. Using technology to make homes safer and easier to control from anywhere is
important. Home security is important for the occupant’s safety. In this paper, we came up with a low cost,
AI based model home security system. The system has a user-friendly interface, allowing users to start
model training and face detection with simple keyboard commands. Our goal is to introduce an innovative
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In the era of data-driven warfare, the integration of big data and machine learning (ML) techniques has
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big data and ML in the defence sector, exploring their potential to revolutionize intelligence gathering,
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algorithms, these technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for threat detection, predictive analysis,
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understanding of the current state of big data and ML in defence, while examining the challenges and
ethical considerations that must be addressed to ensure responsible and effective implementation.
Cloud Computing, being one of the most recent innovative developments of the IT world, has been
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the economy, has even made a remarkable contribution to the economic growth of the United States. To
this end, the study focuses on how cloud computing technology has impacted economic growth through
SMEs in the United States. Relevant literature connected to the variables of interest in this study was
reviewed, and secondary data was generated and utilized in the analysis section of this paper. The findings
of this paper revealed that there have been meaningful contributions that the usage of virtualization has
made in the commercial dealings of small firms in the United States, and this has also been reflected in the
economic growth of the country. This paper further revealed that as important as cloud-based software is,
some SMEs are still skeptical about how it can help improve their business and increase their bottom line
and hence have failed to adopt it. Apart from the SMEs, some notable large firms in different industries,
including information and educational services, have adopted cloud computing technology and hence
contributed to the economic growth of the United States. Lastly, findings from our inferential statistics
revealed that no discernible change has occurred in innovation between small and big businesses in the
adoption of cloud computing. Both categories of businesses adopt cloud computing in the same way, and
their contribution to the American economy has no significant difference in the usage of virtualization.
Energy-constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have garnered significant research interest in
recent years. Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO), or Cooperative MIMO, represents a specialized
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challenging and resource-constrained environments. By facilitating collaboration among sensor nodes,
Cooperative MIMO enhances reliability, coverage, and energy efficiency in WSN deployments.
Consequently, MIMO finds application in diverse WSN scenarios, spanning environmental monitoring,
industrial automation, and healthcare applications.
The AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT) is devoted to fields of Computer Science and Information Systems. The IJCSIT is a open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published in electronic form as well as print form. The mission of this journal is to publish original contributions in its field in order to propagate knowledge amongst its readers and to be a reference publication. IJCSIT publishes original research papers and review papers, as well as auxiliary material such as: research papers, case studies, technical reports etc.
With growing, Car parking increases with the number of car users. With the increased use of smartphones
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server and are recovered by the mobile application which offers many options attractively and with no cost
to users and lets the user check reservation details. With IoT technology, the smart parking system can be
connected wirelessly to easily track available locations.
Welcome to AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT), your gateway to the latest advancements in the dynamic fields of Computer Science and Information Systems.
Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) are computer-based tutoring systems that deal with
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questions that deal with the different concepts and have different difficulty levels. Constraint-based student
modeling (CBSM) technique is used as a short-term student model. CBSM is used to define in small grain
level the different grammar skills through the defined skill structures. The main contribution of this paper
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representation is used as a mechanism for efficiently checking constraints to model the student knowledge
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of trails the student takes for answering each question and fuzzy logic decision system are used to
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showed the system's effectiveness in learning in addition to the satisfaction of students and teachers with its
features and abilities.
In the realm of computer security, the importance of efficient and reliable user authentication methods has
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behavioral patterns inherent in high-intensity and low-intensity UI interactions. The study extends beyond
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The AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT) is devoted to fields of Computer Science and Information Systems. The IJCSIT is a open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published in electronic form as well as print form. The mission of this journal is to publish original contributions in its field in order to propagate knowledge amongst its readers and to be a reference publication.
Image segmentation and classification tasks in computer vision have proven to be highly effective using neural networks, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). These tasks have numerous
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The AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT) is devoted to fields of Computer Science and Information Systems. The IJCSIT is a open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published in electronic form as well as print form. The mission of this journal is to publish original contributions in its field in order to propagate knowledge amongst its readers and to be a reference publication.
This research aims to further understanding in the field of continuous authentication using behavioural
biometrics. We are contributing a novel dataset that encompasses the gesture data of 15 users playing
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Support Vector Classifier (SVC), to determine the authenticity of specific user actions. Our most robust
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This paper discusses the capabilities and limitations of GPT-3 (0), a state-of-the-art language model, in the
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In the realm of computer security, the importance of efficient and reliable user authentication methods has
become increasingly critical. This paper examines the potential of mouse movement dynamics as a
consistent metric for continuous authentication. By analysing user mouse movement patterns in two
contrasting gaming scenarios, "Team Fortress" and "Poly Bridge," we investigate the distinctive
behavioral patterns inherent in high-intensity and low-intensity UI interactions. The study extends beyond
conventional methodologies by employing a range of machine learning models. These models are carefully
selected to assess their effectiveness in capturing and interpreting the subtleties of user behavior as
reflected in their mouse movements. This multifaceted approach allows for a more nuanced and
comprehensive understanding of user interaction patterns. Our findings reveal that mouse movement
dynamics can serve as a reliable indicator for continuous user authentication. The diverse machine
learning models employed in this study demonstrate competent performance in user verification, marking
an improvement over previous methods used in this field. This research contributes to the ongoing efforts to
enhance computer security and highlights the potential of leveraging user behavior, specifically mouse
dynamics, in developing robust authentication systems.
Image segmentation and classification tasks in computer vision have proven to be highly effective using neural networks, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). These tasks have numerous
practical applications, such as in medical imaging, autonomous driving, and surveillance. CNNs are capable
of learning complex features directly from images and achieving outstanding performance across several
datasets. In this work, we have utilized three different datasets to investigate the efficacy of various preprocessing and classification techniques in accurssedately segmenting and classifying different structures
within the MRI and natural images. We have utilized both sample gradient and Canny Edge Detection
methods for pre-processing, and K-means clustering have been applied to segment the images. Image
augmentation improves the size and diversity of datasets for training the models for image classification.
This work highlights transfer learning’s effectiveness in image classification using CNNs and VGG 16 that
provides insights into the selection of pre-trained models and hyper parameters for optimal performance.
We have proposed a comprehensive approach for image segmentation and classification, incorporating preprocessing techniques, the K-means algorithm for segmentation, and employing deep learning models such
as CNN and VGG 16 for classification.
- The document presents 6 different models for defining foot size in Tunisia: 2 statistical models, 2 neural network models using unsupervised learning, and 2 models combining neural networks and fuzzy logic.
- The statistical models (SM and SHM) are based on applying statistical equations to morphological foot data.
- The neural network models (MSK and MHSK) use self-organizing Kohonen maps to cluster foot data and model full and half sizes.
- The fuzzy neural network models (MSFK and MHSFK) incorporate fuzzy logic into the neural network learning process to better account for uncertainty in foot sizes.
The security of Electric Vehicle (EV) charging has gained momentum after the increase in the EV adoption
in the past few years. Mobile applications have been integrated into EV charging systems that mainly use a
cloud-based platform to host their services and data. Like many complex systems, cloud systems are
susceptible to cyberattacks if proper measures are not taken by the organization to secure them. In this
paper, we explore the security of key components in the EV charging infrastructure, including the mobile
application and its cloud service. We conducted an experiment that initiated a Man in the Middle attack
between an EV app and its cloud services. Our results showed that it is possible to launch attacks against
the connected infrastructure by taking advantage of vulnerabilities that may have substantial economic and
operational ramifications on the EV charging ecosystem. We conclude by providing mitigation suggestions
and future research directions.
The AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT) is devoted to fields of Computer Science and Information Systems. The IJCSIT is a open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published in electronic form as well as print form. The mission of this journal is to publish original contributions in its field in order to propagate knowledge amongst its readers and to be a reference publication.
The AIRCC's International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT) is devoted to fields of Computer Science and Information Systems. The IJCSIT is a open access peer-reviewed scientific journal published in electronic form as well as print form. The mission of this journal is to publish original contributions in its field in order to propagate knowledge amongst its readers and to be a reference publication.
বাংলাদেশের অর্থনৈতিক সমীক্ষা ২০২৪ [Bangladesh Economic Review 2024 Bangla.pdf] কম্পিউটার , ট্যাব ও স্মার্ট ফোন ভার্সন সহ সম্পূর্ণ বাংলা ই-বুক বা pdf বই " সুচিপত্র ...বুকমার্ক মেনু 🔖 ও হাইপার লিংক মেনু 📝👆 যুক্ত ..
আমাদের সবার জন্য খুব খুব গুরুত্বপূর্ণ একটি বই ..বিসিএস, ব্যাংক, ইউনিভার্সিটি ভর্তি ও যে কোন প্রতিযোগিতা মূলক পরীক্ষার জন্য এর খুব ইম্পরট্যান্ট একটি বিষয় ...তাছাড়া বাংলাদেশের সাম্প্রতিক যে কোন ডাটা বা তথ্য এই বইতে পাবেন ...
তাই একজন নাগরিক হিসাবে এই তথ্য গুলো আপনার জানা প্রয়োজন ...।
বিসিএস ও ব্যাংক এর লিখিত পরীক্ষা ...+এছাড়া মাধ্যমিক ও উচ্চমাধ্যমিকের স্টুডেন্টদের জন্য অনেক কাজে আসবে ...
Reimagining Your Library Space: How to Increase the Vibes in Your Library No ...Diana Rendina
Librarians are leading the way in creating future-ready citizens – now we need to update our spaces to match. In this session, attendees will get inspiration for transforming their library spaces. You’ll learn how to survey students and patrons, create a focus group, and use design thinking to brainstorm ideas for your space. We’ll discuss budget friendly ways to change your space as well as how to find funding. No matter where you’re at, you’ll find ideas for reimagining your space in this session.
A workshop hosted by the South African Journal of Science aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers with little or no experience in writing and publishing journal articles.
LAND USE LAND COVER AND NDVI OF MIRZAPUR DISTRICT, UPRAHUL
This Dissertation explores the particular circumstances of Mirzapur, a region located in the
core of India. Mirzapur, with its varied terrains and abundant biodiversity, offers an optimal
environment for investigating the changes in vegetation cover dynamics. Our study utilizes
advanced technologies such as GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and Remote sensing to
analyze the transformations that have taken place over the course of a decade.
The complex relationship between human activities and the environment has been the focus
of extensive research and worry. As the global community grapples with swift urbanization,
population expansion, and economic progress, the effects on natural ecosystems are becoming
more evident. A crucial element of this impact is the alteration of vegetation cover, which plays a
significant role in maintaining the ecological equilibrium of our planet.Land serves as the foundation for all human activities and provides the necessary materials for
these activities. As the most crucial natural resource, its utilization by humans results in different
'Land uses,' which are determined by both human activities and the physical characteristics of the
land.
The utilization of land is impacted by human needs and environmental factors. In countries
like India, rapid population growth and the emphasis on extensive resource exploitation can lead
to significant land degradation, adversely affecting the region's land cover.
Therefore, human intervention has significantly influenced land use patterns over many
centuries, evolving its structure over time and space. In the present era, these changes have
accelerated due to factors such as agriculture and urbanization. Information regarding land use and
cover is essential for various planning and management tasks related to the Earth's surface,
providing crucial environmental data for scientific, resource management, policy purposes, and
diverse human activities.
Accurate understanding of land use and cover is imperative for the development planning
of any area. Consequently, a wide range of professionals, including earth system scientists, land
and water managers, and urban planners, are interested in obtaining data on land use and cover
changes, conversion trends, and other related patterns. The spatial dimensions of land use and
cover support policymakers and scientists in making well-informed decisions, as alterations in
these patterns indicate shifts in economic and social conditions. Monitoring such changes with the
help of Advanced technologies like Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems is
crucial for coordinated efforts across different administrative levels. Advanced technologies like
Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
9
Changes in vegetation cover refer to variations in the distribution, composition, and overall
structure of plant communities across different temporal and spatial scales. These changes can
occur natural.
Main Java[All of the Base Concepts}.docxadhitya5119
This is part 1 of my Java Learning Journey. This Contains Custom methods, classes, constructors, packages, multithreading , try- catch block, finally block and more.
Liberal Approach to the Study of Indian Politics.pdf
AGILE DISTRIBUTED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IN NINE CENTRAL EUROPEAN TEAMS:CHALLENGES, BENEFITS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
1. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
DOI: 10.5121/ijcsit.2019.11101 1
AGILE DISTRIBUTED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IN
NINE CENTRAL EUROPEAN TEAMS:CHALLENGES,
BENEFITS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Manuel Stadler, Raoul Vallon, Martin Pazderka and Thomas Grechenig
Research Group for Industrial Software, Vienna University of Technology,
Vienna, Austria
ABSTRACT
Although initially designed for co-located teams, agile methodologies promise mitigation to the challenges
present in distributed software development with their demand for frequent communication. We examine
the application of agile practices in software engineering teams with low geographical distribution in
Austria and Germany. To gather insights on challenges and benefits faced by distributed teams we conduct
interviews with eleven representatives and analyse the interview transcripts using the inductive category
formation method. As a result, we identify four major challenges, such as technical obstructions or the
impediments different language abilities have on communication, and four benefits, regarding
collaboration and information radiation, that agile methods yield in distributed teams. Based on our
analysis of challenges and benefits, we deduct seven recommendations to improve collaboration, overcome
distance and avoid pitfalls. Key recommendations for teams with low geographical distance include that
teams should get together at certain points to build relationships and trust and share information face-to-
face.
KEYWORDS
Agile Distributed Software Development, Distributed Agile, Nearshoring, Agile Methods
1. INTRODUCTION
Agile methods continually gain attention and face extensive adoption but there is also a trend
towards distribution, where teams facilitate modern communication technologies to bridge the
challenges of spatial dispersion [1]. In 2016 around 25% of German software developers reported
to have experience with working remote [2]. Kajko-Mattsson et al. [1] summarise the following:
“Being in stark contrast with each other, Agile and Distributed Software Development (DSD)
methods are regarded as partners in an impossible marriage. Despite this, many organisations
consider them as practices worth striving for”.
This paper examines how teams distributed within a low geographical distance apply agile
methods, which challenges were faced, and which benefits teams experienced. We start with
exploring aspects of distribution, like different dimensions of distance and challenges they
introduce, as well as the general state of the art of agile literature in Section 2. Section 3 then
displays the methodology of our research, enumerates the research questions and propositions,
and presents the analysed teams. Section 4 presents the results from our cross-case analysis,
followed by a discussion of the research questions. Section 5 summarises our findings, lists our
derived recommendations and closes with future perspectives.
2. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
2
2. BACKGROUND
A team is considered distributed when team members are sited in different, geographically
dispersed, locations. By definition, it is not necessary that every team member is remote, at least
one person has to be separated from the rest of the team [3]. The reasons for a team to work in a
distributed setting are manifold, a regional argument is talent acquisition [4] or accessing local
knowledge [5]. On a global scale, cost advantages are driving arguments for off shoring work to
remote countries and continents [6], or accessing new markets and being near to customers [7].
Implementing agile methodologies in distributed teams does not seem very applicable at first
glance. Agile frameworks strongly demand co-location of teams and while not being an inevitable
requirement, experts strongly recommend to co-locate team members as close as possible (e.g. [8]
or [9]). On a closer look the term co-location is not specifically mentioned in the agile manifesto,
but is often derived from one of its 12 principles:
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.” [10]
Agile values are as suited for distributed teams as they are for co-located ones, as Beck and
Andres [8] state: “the values of XP are just as suited to multi-site development as they are to
teams that sit together”. Cohn [11] furthermore argues in a similar way about a specific agile
methodology: “Scrum's preference for face-to-face communication, the argument goes, makes it a
poor choice for distributed teams. Fortunately, this argument is false”.
2.1 DIMENSIONS OF DISTANCE
Next to geographical separation, there are also cultural, temporal and configurational dimensions
to consider [3].
Geographical Distance can be measured directionally and is described as “the effort required for
one actor to visit another at the latter's home site” [3]. The Allen-Curve states that “the
probability that people in a given organisation will communicate with each other declines
precipitously the farther away from each other they are situated and reaches an asymptotic level
at about 50 meters”. This is not only valid for face-to-face communication, but the data from the
study also shows a decline in the usage of all communication media with increasing distance [12].
Socio-cultural Distance is one of the most complex and therefore least understood dimensions of
distance, but a critical element in a distributed setting [13]. It involves national as well as
organisational culture, work ethic and motivation, as well as spoken languages. Two individuals
with different national backgrounds may share a common organisational culture and therefore
have a low socio-cultural distance. A low socio-cultural distance lowers risks and increases
communication [3]. In the scope of the same company, sites still often differ in various aspects
like informal habits, practices or processes [14].
Configurational Dimension is defined by O’Leary and Cummings as “the arrangement of
members across sites independent of the spatial and temporal distances among them [15].
Especially situations with a concentrated core team and isolated members on different sites
decrease awareness towards remote colleagues. A larger number of sites also boosts complexity
for coordination and raises conflict potential [15].
3. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
3
Temporal Distance, in terms of different time zones, impedes synchronous communication
between individuals and therefore has a negative impact on communication [16]. In our study this
aspect is not relevant as it only contains teams within the same time zone.
2.2 CHALLENGES OF DISTANCE
Those dimensions of Section 2.1 in turn induce various challenges. To be successful, it is
necessary to have control [17] and coordination [18], both factors driven by communication.
Coordination is the challenge of “managing interdependencies, uncertainties and equivocalities,
conflicts, technology representations, and their interrelations” [19]. From a management
perspective, it is the process of integrating tasks with organisational units to enable those entities
to contribute value to the all-up objective. This process of integration commonly requires regular
and intense communication [16].
Figure 1. Impacts of distance [16]
The control aspect can be split into two categories: formal and informal control [20]. Self-
organisation of agile teams taps into intrinsic motivation of team members and is a form of
informal control. The commitment of individuals towards the project goal can rise due to
individual motivations and allegiance towards a mutual goal [11]. Communication, the coupling
factor between coordination and control, is the exchange of information between a sender and a
receiver with the goal of reaching a mutual understanding. Figure 1 shows that distance directly
impedes coordination and control as well as indirectly through its restraining impact on
communication, while the bold arrows “represent the main challenge of global software
development” [16].
3. METHODOLOGY
Building on the literature review, semi-structured interviews constitute the empirical foundation
of this paper, the full approach is depicted in detail in Figure 2. Our chosen approach can be
classified as evaluative qualitative research which is “particularly adept at looking at the
dynamics of how things operate” [21].
4. International Journal of Computer
3.1 OBJECTIVE AND CONSTRAINTS
We deliberately chose a low geographical distance to examine the particular challenges and
benefits of that confined scenario as a lot of recent research, in contrast, focuses on globally
distributed software development. To define the boundaries we use th
al. [22] as a starting point, focusing on teams that can be classified as either
- Geographically Close or Offshore
be in the same country, or - if sp
is not more than 4 hours and sites are reachable within a reasonable amount of time (where, if air
travel is necessary, the flying time is less than 2 hours). We furthermore confined the bou
and defined the following list of criteria which teams and experts have to meet:
• Having at least one permanent team member who is not located with the rest of the team.
• At least one office or site has to be located in Austria or Germany in order t
accessible to the authors. Other sites have to be located in countries adjoining Austria.
• Follow a defined agile process.
• Interviewed experts have to be directly involved in the teams and hold a senior position
or a leading role.
3.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND
Based on the reviewed literature and the defined boundaries, we formulated our primary research
question as well as two sub-questions to narrow the field of investigation further:
• RQ: How are agile processes used in a distributed team (limited to a low geographical
and time dispersion)?
• RQ.A: Which challenges have to be faced when using agile methods and how can those
issues be handled?
• RQ.B: Which benefits result from pursuing agile methods
team?
International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 201
ONSTRAINTS
We deliberately chose a low geographical distance to examine the particular challenges and
benefits of that confined scenario as a lot of recent research, in contrast, focuses on globally
distributed software development. To define the boundaries we use the taxonomy from Šmite et
as a starting point, focusing on teams that can be classified as either Onshore
Offshore - Insourcing - Geographically Near. Locations therefore can
if spanning multiple countries - situations where the time zone offset
is not more than 4 hours and sites are reachable within a reasonable amount of time (where, if air
travel is necessary, the flying time is less than 2 hours). We furthermore confined the bou
and defined the following list of criteria which teams and experts have to meet:
Having at least one permanent team member who is not located with the rest of the team.
At least one office or site has to be located in Austria or Germany in order t
accessible to the authors. Other sites have to be located in countries adjoining Austria.
Follow a defined agile process.
Interviewed experts have to be directly involved in the teams and hold a senior position
Figure 2. Research design
ND PROPOSITIONS
Based on the reviewed literature and the defined boundaries, we formulated our primary research
questions to narrow the field of investigation further:
agile processes used in a distributed team (limited to a low geographical
RQ.A: Which challenges have to be faced when using agile methods and how can those
RQ.B: Which benefits result from pursuing agile methods in a distributed setting for a
Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
4
We deliberately chose a low geographical distance to examine the particular challenges and
benefits of that confined scenario as a lot of recent research, in contrast, focuses on globally
e taxonomy from Šmite et
Onshore - Insourcing
. Locations therefore can
situations where the time zone offset
is not more than 4 hours and sites are reachable within a reasonable amount of time (where, if air
travel is necessary, the flying time is less than 2 hours). We furthermore confined the boundaries
Having at least one permanent team member who is not located with the rest of the team.
At least one office or site has to be located in Austria or Germany in order to be easily
accessible to the authors. Other sites have to be located in countries adjoining Austria.
Interviewed experts have to be directly involved in the teams and hold a senior position
Based on the reviewed literature and the defined boundaries, we formulated our primary research
agile processes used in a distributed team (limited to a low geographical
RQ.A: Which challenges have to be faced when using agile methods and how can those
in a distributed setting for a
5. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
5
The following propositions are intended to highlight different aspects of distributed agile teams
and are derived from the research questions and the literature review.
They provide structure and detail to the enquired topic by serving as more particular
“implementations” of research questions [23] as well as directing attention to certain aspects
within the research topic [24]. Each proposition is followed by the rationale, why we chose to
create the respective proposition.
P1: Iterations in distributed agile teams are similar in length to iterations in co-located
teams: Short iteration cycles which re-evaluate the current status of a team and project are used
to overcome coordination and control challenges. We chose this proposition to check the
difference in iterations between co-located and distributed teams.
P2: Modern software and tools are a major factor for the success of distributed teams: This
proposition assumes that project management software as well as digital communication tools
designed for distributed collaboration are essential and a precondition for effective work. This
importance is also argued in the fourth conjecture of Layman et al. [25].
P3: Aside from communicative skills there are no special requirements for team members
in distributed teams: Because distance negatively impacts communication, team members in
distributed teams need to be even more aware of its necessity. We ask if there are any other
specific skills necessary to participate in a distributed team successfully.
P4: While for short, standardised meeting situations remote communication is sufficient,
face-to-face communication is preferred in longer, informal situations: While modern digital
communication tools are sufficient for shorter formalised situations (like a daily standup), we
want to find out if longer and more informal situations (like retrospectives) are nevertheless
preferably organised in co-located gatherings.
P5: Technical faults and limitations pose a serious issue for distributed communication:
Infrastructure problems like a failing WiFi or a slow internet connection can massively intensify
the primary challenges of remote communication.
P6: Informal and frequent communication improves collaboration between remote
colleagues: This proposition aims to investigate the importance of interaction and informal
communication between individuals as encouraged by the agile manifesto [26].
3.3 DATA COLLECTION
The interview guideline was designed to gather specific experience and approaches that the
interviewees or the team they speak for encountered, as well as general thoughts on distributed
agile teams. In nine interview sessions, a total of eleven experts were interviewed. Table 1 gives
an overview of each expert's role and context. All interviewed individuals are active in industrial
software engineering and occupy leading positions or have other extensive experience with agile
methods in distributed settings. Even though the experts in the Alpha and Beta case are labelled
as executives their companies are of moderate size and they are still actively involved in the
software development process.
All interviews were held in German and lasted between 45 minutes to 75 minutes. After each
interview session, the audio recording was transcribed to interview protocols and anonymised by
removing individual names of people, places or company names. Two interviews were done
remotely, one via telephone (Beta) and one as a video conference call (Iota), all other interviews
were conducted face-to-face. The iterative data collection phase is shown in Figure 2. The
6. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
6
interview protocol of each interview session was used to readjust the interview guideline (like
rephrasing or reordering questions and topics).
Table 1. Overview of the interviewed experts
Expert Role
Team
Size
Nr. of Sites Countries
Process
Model
Alpha CEO and CTO 2 to 5 3 Sites Austria Scrum
Beta CEO 3 to 5 4 Sites Austria Scrum
Gamma Team Leader 8 to 10 2 Sites Germany Scrum
Delta Two Team Leader 3 and 7 3 Sites Austria, Slovakia
Scrum,
Kanban
Epsilon
Department
Manager
Varying 4 Sites
Austria,
Germany
Scrum,
Kanban
Zeta
Department
Manager
Varying Multiple Sites
Austria, India,
Slovakia, Poland
Scrum,
Kanban
Eta Scrum Master 4 to 7 4 Sites
Austria,
Germany
Scrum
Theta Agile Coach 5 to 10 3 Sites Austria, Hungary Scrum
Iota Team Leader 5 to 8 Multiple Sites
Germany &
adjacent
countries
Kanban
3.4 DATA ANALYSIS
To derive conclusions from the gathered data (while keeping a traceable chain of evidence) the
transcripts were analysed applying the inductive category formation method adapted from
Mayring [27]. This iterative process is depicted in the Data Analysis box of Figure 2.
As a starting point, some a priori codes based on the literature review and the research questions
and propositions were defined and used to analyse the first interview [23]. During this analysis
phase existing codes are continually adapted, new codes introduced, and existing ones renamed or
merged. One code is assigned to various text passages and a text passage can also be marked with
multiple codes. Beside the iterative process of adapting the codes with each analysed interview
protocol, the data collection and analysis steps are again iteratively connected and were
performed alongside each other [23]. The coded material is grouped into five main categories,
Figure 3 shows the used codes as well as the code-category mapping.
The second category, ‘Agile Practices’ examines agile practices explicitly mentioned by the
teams like pair programming, continuous integration or code reviews, inquires on the
implementation and if practices had to be adapted to the distributed environment.
‘Communication’, as the third main category, was one of the most prominent topics during the
interviews. It investigates how communication within the team and between multiple sites is
realised, which kinds of meetings exist, and which communication channels are used. The fourth
category, labelled ‘Distribution’, explores general aspects of the distribution and the initial cause
of the team ending up in a distributed setting. Finally, the ‘Team’ section summarises team and
personnel aspects like requirements for new team members and team-building aspects.
7. International Journal of Computer
4. RESULTS
4.1 SUMMARY
This section presents the aggregated insights from the expert interviews and is structured
according to the categories illustrated in Figure 3. We worked out commonalities, point
differences between interviewed experts and present relevant quotes to underline our findings.
“There is a clear trend towards agile methods and there is a trend towards more flexible work
conditions and working remote. Those trends have happened over
simultaneously. In my opinion there is no reason why you should not be able to combine the one
thing with the other.” (Team Leader, Iota)
4.1.1 PROCESS MODEL
Only the Iota expert favoured Kanban over Scrum in general, the other expert
Scrum or, as mentioned by the Delta, Epsilon and Zeta, decided individually for each project
between Scrum and Kanban.
All teams execute regular planning meetings (in case of Scrum in the form of a sprint planning)
as well as retrospective meetings and use short daily meetings following the standardised Scrum
suggestions. The typical duration of iterations is similar to th
from one week (Gamma) to a maximum of four weeks (Delta), all other teams apply sprints of
either two or three weeks. The Iota case (applying a Kanban process) reported they do not have
classical sprints, but arrange their
International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 201
Figure 3. Codes and categories
This section presents the aggregated insights from the expert interviews and is structured
according to the categories illustrated in Figure 3. We worked out commonalities, point
differences between interviewed experts and present relevant quotes to underline our findings.
“There is a clear trend towards agile methods and there is a trend towards more flexible work
conditions and working remote. Those trends have happened over the last ten years
simultaneously. In my opinion there is no reason why you should not be able to combine the one
(Team Leader, Iota)
Only the Iota expert favoured Kanban over Scrum in general, the other experts either applied
Scrum or, as mentioned by the Delta, Epsilon and Zeta, decided individually for each project
All teams execute regular planning meetings (in case of Scrum in the form of a sprint planning)
as well as retrospective meetings and use short daily meetings following the standardised Scrum
suggestions. The typical duration of iterations is similar to that of co-located teams and ranges
from one week (Gamma) to a maximum of four weeks (Delta), all other teams apply sprints of
ither two or three weeks. The Iota case (applying a Kanban process) reported they do not have
classical sprints, but arrange their planning and retrospective meetings similarly recurrently.
Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
7
This section presents the aggregated insights from the expert interviews and is structured
according to the categories illustrated in Figure 3. We worked out commonalities, point out
differences between interviewed experts and present relevant quotes to underline our findings.
“There is a clear trend towards agile methods and there is a trend towards more flexible work
the last ten years
simultaneously. In my opinion there is no reason why you should not be able to combine the one
s either applied
Scrum or, as mentioned by the Delta, Epsilon and Zeta, decided individually for each project
All teams execute regular planning meetings (in case of Scrum in the form of a sprint planning)
as well as retrospective meetings and use short daily meetings following the standardised Scrum
located teams and ranges
from one week (Gamma) to a maximum of four weeks (Delta), all other teams apply sprints of
ither two or three weeks. The Iota case (applying a Kanban process) reported they do not have
planning and retrospective meetings similarly recurrently.
8. International Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology (IJCSIT) Vol 11, No 1, February 2019
8
There was no straight-ahead planned path towards the respective process the teams currently
apply, in all cases it was reported that the adoption was an incremental process either
progressively introducing new courses of action or continuously adapting existing practices.
4.1.2 AGILE PRACTICES
All teams utilised code reviews in various forms. Alpha, Theta and Iota stated that they use pull
requests as code review process and praised that method as being highly effective: Not only does
it improve code quality, it furthermore has a knowledge sharing aspect because multiple team
members from remote locations review code and improve it mutually. It also shifts away from
single code ownership to collective ownership because every reviewer also takes up responsibility
for reviewed source code. All teams reported that they intensively use continuous integration
systems which also have information radiating effects. Furthermore, each team used digital
boards from their project management tools to radiate information, which is not only valuable
within an organisation but also for external stakeholders. Pair programming was occasionally
used by most of the teams (Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Eta, Theta) without reporting severe
problems. This practice was used to transfer knowledge and information between individuals as
well as locations as stated by the Beta expert:
“Pair Programming is mandatory for transferring knowledge. Because we have specialists, and
everybody is specialised in certain areas [...] and we would like people to share their knowledge
because if somebody leaves or becomes absent [...] another one should know what he was
working on.” (CEO, Beta)
Documentation: Epsilon and Iota argued that documentation is more important in a
distributed team than in a co-located situation because of reduced face-to-face
communication and is vital to ensure knowledge transfer. One common practice most
teams applied was the usage of established process management tools, the most common
being Jira1
and Confluence2
from Atlassian (utilised by Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Eta
and Theta).
Planned or Failed Practices: When teams came up with new suggestions, they tried
them in the following iterations rather than planning long ahead. Therefore, no practices
were mentioned that were not yet applied but planned for the future. One exception was
the Theta expert who reported that the team changed longer meetings like sprint planning
and retrospectives away from a complete remote approach towards meeting regularly in
one location:
“In the past, I tried doing planning sessions remotely, but the costs were not justifiable.
You just have so much overhead in communication, so many misunderstandings and call-
back inquiries that the efficiency cannot be compared to being co-located. Just such
simple tasks like going through the backlog can take up three times as much time as when
doing it face-to-face.” (Agile Coach, Theta)
4.1.3 COMMUNICATION
Every team had some tool or setup serving as a primary communication channel. Most teams
used Skype (Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta and Theta), while two teams shifted to a tool called
Slack (Alpha and Iota). Meetings are done with common audio and video communication tools.
Zeta and Theta reported that they have special meeting rooms for team meetings with dedicated
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hardware like microphones, large screens or LCD projectors. There was no consent about the
usage of video conferencing, some use audio as well as video channels while other teams just use
audio channels for certain meetings.
Face-to-Face Communication: The first important reason for regular face-to-face
meetings is to build trust and interpersonal relationships between team members. During
the distributed collaboration, communication mainly focuses on professional aspects and
not personal matters and a lot of informal communication situations (like lunch, coffee
breaks or after-work activities) are missing. Secondly, when it comes to complex topics
(like retrospectives or long planning session) or a lot of attendees, such situations are
preferably done co-located.
“Especially there [at the retrospective meetings] it is important to have all people in one
location. The discussions are taking longer, you need a whiteboard from time to time to
sketch something and explain something to others. This is very difficult when doing it
remotely; it does not work.” (Team Leader, Iota)
Language: Even in teams within the same country or distributed within adjacent ones,
having multiple native tongues within a team can raise the complexity of communication.
Gamma, Delta, Theta and Iota explicitly mentioned this factor and that it should not be
underestimated.
4.1.4 DISTRIBUTION
The main reason for teams ending up distributed was due to human resource aspects: needed
know-how or resources were not available in one location and therefore it was necessary to add
remote team members.
Advantages: Having access to more employable candidates and being able to choose from a
broader range of skilled individuals was named as one of the main benefits. Furthermore,
teams are more flexible because their processes and tools are set up for remote work giving
team members more freedom in choosing their workplace. A third aspect (found in cases Zeta
and Eta) was the ability to be near to customers and generally being present in multiple
locations as a company and thus increase visibility.
Disadvantages: Team members are more detached from each other which impairs
communication. Finding the right communication tools for the team can be time-consuming
and remote communication setups like conference rooms and hardware have to be serviced
and maintained. Generally, this additional effort adds complexity which increases potential
error sources in the future. Other reported issues (by Beta, Gamma, Epsilon and Zeta) are the
increased costs and time travelling entails.
Culture: Despite the low geographical distance, some teams had colleagues with different
nationalities and cultural backgrounds. All of them reported that this diversity is having a
positive effect due to different approaches and mindsets. The only cultural aspect that was
reported to be challenging was different spoken languages and the communication problems
those can bring if not accounted adequately.
Configuration: Configurational distance was mentioned explicitly by Alpha and Theta but
was also hinted in other cases. Alpha reported the bad experience single remote team
members joining a meeting where a larger group of co-located sometimes had when the co-
located group did not pay enough attention to maintain proper conduct. Theta similarly stated
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that imbalance could be especially problematic in meeting sessions where the majority of the
team is co-located in one place and just a few individuals are attending remotely.
Technology and Infrastructure: More than half of the interviewees reported bad
infrastructure and internet availability as one of their biggest problems.
4.1.5 TEAM
All experts applied team building strategies like bringing the team together on a regular basis for
team events. Experts agreed that it is necessary for team members to be communicative and self-
organising and that a communicative and trusting team is an essential condition for successful
remote collaboration.
4.2 RESEARCH PROPOSITIONS REVISITED
P1: Iterations in distributed agile teams are similar in length to iterations in co-located
teams.
All teams stayed within the typical maximal sprint duration of 30 days (which was applied just by
Delta). Apart from Gamma (one-week sprints), seven out of the nine interviewed teams had
iteration durations of two or three weeks. Therefore, the empirical data supports this proposition
in a low distributed setting.
P2: Modern software and tools are a major factor for the success of distributed teams.
All teams used software tools designed for agile project management that provide virtual boards
and visual representations used to spread and share information between locations functioning as
an information radiator. Furthermore, they offer a regular channel every team member can use at
any time which is without much obligation and therefore reduce the perceived distance.
“Regarding the tools, we have available to support our mode of operation I do not see a problem.
The available selection you can pick from is huge and they are still constantly improving. There
for sure is room to still upgrade and improve but for my daily routine there are very few
challenges that have not already been solved.” (Team Leader, Iota)
P3: Aside from communicative skills there are no special requirements for team members
in distributed teams.
No team named any essential technical requirements, but all stated that the ability to
communicate is a vital skill for every team member. Except for two, the experts stated that junior
level experience is sufficient to collaborate successfully in a distributed team. On the other hand,
Beta and Gamma argued that remote team members should be generally senior level because they
felt the training and on-boarding of inexperienced developers is more difficult due to the
communication impediments of distance.
P4: While for short, standardised meeting situations remote communication is sufficient,
face-to-face communication is preferred in longer, informal situations.
Daily meetings and general meetings of short duration (with durations typically not planned much
longer than one hour) are done smoothly with audio or video conferencing. When it comes to
informal, complex communication situations on the other hand, all interviewees reported that they
prefer to bring their teams together in one physical location if possible.
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P5: Technical faults and limitations pose a serious issue for distributed communication.
Infrastructure was an issue that was pointed out in multiple situations during the interview. Alpha,
Beta, Delta, Epsilon and Iota explicitly mentioned bad internet connectivity and infrastructure as
a significant downside of the distribution due to the negative impacts on communication. Eta (and
Epsilon) furthermore pointed out the dire situation during travel:
“In transit [between the two offices] I do not join any meeting. Maybe briefly if somebody calls
me - but generally, you know that on this route the network connection fails two or three times,
you cannot really participate in a meeting.” (Scrum Master, Eta)
P6: Informal and frequent communication improves collaboration between remote
colleagues.
As mentioned in Section 4.1.3 all teams had primary communication channels like Skype or
Slack. In 5 out of the 9 interviews experts mentioned the benefits of such a channel: That it
creates proximity and a feeling of sitting together and therefore reduces the perceived distance
between team members. One advocate of such a channel was the Epsilon expert who argued:
“A big amount of communication [...] is done via a chat system. A classic chat system where you
can join easily, other people respond quickly, and you have an ongoing communication flow for
the whole day. This works because it can be used casually alongside the work.” (Department
Manager, Epsilon)
4.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS REVISITED
RQ: How are agile processes used in a distributed team (limited to a low geographical and
time dispersion)?
When applying agile methods like Scrum or Kanban, the overall process, applied practices,
iteration durations and team sizes are generally equal to co-located teams. The big difference, the
geographical distance preventing face-to-face communication and direct interaction, is met by
replacing this direct communication channel by various digital alternatives like text chats, audio
calls or video conferences. Interacting with remote colleagues is done with the excessive use of
collaboration and management tools which function as information radiators to keep distant team
members informed. Although no substantial barrier, there are aspects that require increased
attention like the scheduling of meetings or extra effort to uphold communication between sites.
“In my opinion, this [the constraint of co-location] has changed by now, people are noticing and
hearing things because they are constantly chatting with each other, that is similar to talking.
Maybe it is even better because it does not disturb you, you can inquire when you want and are
not forced to listen at a certain moment. That is definitely an advantage.” (Department Manager,
Epsilon)
RQ.A: Which challenges have to be faced using agile methods and how can those issues be
handled?
This section investigates the impact and significance of the three main challenges of distribution,
as well as other impediments that were identified.
Communication: Out of the three major challenges discussed in Section 0,
communication is arguably the biggest hindrance in remote agile teams. Agile methods
strongly rely on frequent communication and trust within a team. Although not an
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insuperable barrier it still requires attention and strategies to improve the situation due to
the crucial influence communication has on coordination and control. Regular face-to-
face contact is used to build and foster a team spirit and interpersonal relationships. All
experts reported that they periodically bring together the whole team to deal with
complex topics like architecture planning or retrospective meetings. The Eta expert
argued explained their approach like this:
”What is important if I do not have the optimum like being co-located in one big room is
to try and solve the problems another way. We, for example, say: If we are distributed,
we do at least the sprint transitions in the same location.” (Scrum Master, Eta)
Language: Team members who do not share the same native tongue were quite common
despite the focus on low geographical distance and such a case was directly mentioned in
four out of nine interview sessions. Remote communication lacks various channels,
making it especially hard for non-native speakers to follow conversations and to argue
with colleagues [28]. Different language levels therefore are having a bigger impact than
in co-located situations. To account for this challenge, raising awareness about this
obstacle and the different aspects of remote communication should be the first step.
Furthermore, improving communication possibilities by providing proper software as
well as hardware to improve the quality of the transmitted audio and video channels.
Awareness: Creating and maintaining awareness about the status of remote team
members can be challenging. One team leader of the Delta case stated: “What we miss
are some basic things like knowing if your teammate is still at work or already at home. If
you are in the same room, you can take a look at his place or ask a co-worker” (Team
Leader 1, Delta). Alpha and Beta use the status setting of their communication tools
(Slack and Skype) to display the current state of team members: There are various agreed
upon states like ‘at work’, ‘in a meeting’ or ‘on holiday’ which are used to tell the current
status to remote colleagues. Teams have to understand and accept that collaboration in
distributed teams differs from co-located ones and that it is necessary to apply practices
(like frequent meetings) and tools to counter lacking awareness of remote occurrences
and events.
Technology and connectivity: Communication and collaboration in distributed teams
build on reliable internet connectivity technology like communication hard- and software.
A regularly reported issue is the lack of those requirements like an unsteady network
connection which massively impedes synchronous and frequent communication, in turn
having a negative impact on coordination and control. One measure to reduce such
obstacles is to invest in quality hardware and stable internet- and wireless connections.
Having backup plans and protocols in case of failing communication channels also can
reduce disconcertment within a remote team.
More detailed solutions and proposals to overcome those challenges and avoid pitfalls are
described in Section 5.1.
RQ.B: Which benefits result from pursuing agile methods in a distributed setting for a
team?
Agile methods have an especially positive impact on control and coordination challenges. In
detail the following benefits on geographically distributed teams were identified:
Compensation of coordination and control challenges: These challenges are mitigated
by short iterations and fast feedback loops of agile methods. While setting up clear
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schedules and practices are aspects of formal control, informal control is induced by
frequent meetings and the self-organising aspect of agile teams. Short iterations and daily
meetings are two aspects of agile methods that alleviate issues of coordination. Combined
with modern project management tools and digital boards serving as information
radiators the coordination challenge is strongly mitigated.
“Agile methods make it easier because I am faster in control. Due to the daily standup
and the fact that upcoming work is broken down to small work item pieces I am able to
see progress much faster.” (Department Manager, Zeta)
Team spirit and collaboration: Agile methods build on frequent communication which
helps teams accept the geographical distance and try to overcome it. A high amount of
communication within a team positively impacts collaboration between geographical
locations.
A Quicker revelation of communication and collaboration issues: Obstacles like
misapprehensions can lead to problematic outcomes in distributed teams but frequent
communication, short iterations and feedback loops reveal obstacles very swiftly.
“The reason why I think agile methods are very helpful in distributed teams is that they
generally focus on open and short-term communication, communication in short
iterations. What I have seen in distributed teams without short communication iterations
is that they drift apart very easily.” (Agile Coach, Theta)
Spreading of information between sites: They are excellent ways of radiating
information: Technical aspects like automated tests and continuous integration systems
constantly monitor the status and inform team members about a project's status.
Practices like pair programming or daily meetings furthermore regularly update
all team members about progress and directions of a project.
4.4 LIMITATIONS
We achieved internal validity by relying on theoretical propositions as a starting point.
Furthermore, the data is gathered from multiple different teams, grouped and compared to each
other. Regarding external validity targeting the generalisability of results, our narrow focus to low
distance does not allow generalisation beyond that specific context. Especially insights regarding
the infrastructure situation are very specific to certain locations. The ‘Temporal Distance’
dimension was not analysed in accordance with our focus listed in Section 0 and because all
investigated teams were within the same time zone.
The proposed recommendations listed in Section 0 are derived from the analysed data and are yet
to be validated in future work.
4.5 COMPARISON TO RELATED WORK
Zieris and Salinger [29] investigated a very similar agile near shoring setting, where two polish
Scrum teams worked remotely for a German company. They summarised that agile near shoring
“is feasible and may produce high satisfaction amongst Product Owners” which corresponds with
our conclusion. They furthermore highlighted the importance of awareness about agile practices
as well as the distance between team members, two essential aspects similar to our findings. The
researched teams applied an extra meeting ahead of the daily scrum they called “Synchronization
Meeting” which had no strict rules: “The whole meeting is driven by the developers’ needs and
continues until no more questions pop up. Hence, there is no time-boxing: If need be, the Sync
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will be resumed right after the Daily Scrum, practically occupying all developers”. This practice
resembles closely to our fourth recommendation (“Plan for communication”) in Section 0.
Wawryk et al. [30] performed a case study about a Scrum team which started as a co-located team
in Austria and then was scaled with colleagues from Germany and Bosnia. They identified the
language as one main challenge faced by the distributed team.
Furthermore, they reported that there were no major cultural differences because of cultural
awareness of team members. In contrary according to the teams’ feedback, “all team members
were open and curious about other cultures and lifestyles”. What constituted a challenge were the
different work time models and holidays of the different countries. One of the biggest challenges
was the high need for communication. Another aspect which resembles our findings (and is one
of our recommendations in Section 0.) was the positive aspect of team building activities where
the whole team was co-located in one location.
Generally, agile methods are beneficial in distributed teams [31], but it is a notable aspect that
teams distributed within a limited distance still face similar challenges like globally distributed
ones. A systemic review from Alzoubi et al. [32] investigating communication challenges in
geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) and techniques to overcome those
challenges on a global distributed scale. Some of their identified techniques to overcome
communication challenges resemble our recommendations in Section 0. To overcome distance
differences they recommend to “encourage regular visits and face-to-face communication, create
a structure of trust, minimize dependencies among teams, encourage individuals to work closely
with both developers and project management teams, enforce meetings and commitment, localize
component ownership, enhance coordination by promoting social skills” or in terms of tooling
they suggest to “switch to the most appropriate tools” and “use synchronous and asynchronous
tools”.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The progress of technology and evolution in collaboration tools increased the number of software
engineers working in distributed teams year by year. Our results show that applying agile
methods in distributed teams with low geographical distance poses no problem but rather brings
forth several benefits. Common agile practices were mastered successfully by replacing face-to-
face communication with a variety of digital communication channels. These practices not only
improve the software engineering process but furthermore pose additional communication
channels and information radiators which in turn improve collaboration.
There were no deviations to basic agile principles like team size and iteration length compared to
co-located teams. Furthermore, there were no agile practices that were doomed to fail due to the
distributed setting, instead every team managed to apply all the techniques and processes they felt
worth using.
Short iterations and frequent and encouraged communication of agile methods are solving
problems of coordination and control and no investigated case reported any serious obstacles in
those areas. Iteratively and constantly reviewing, re-evaluating and re-prioritising the workflow
and work items increases social cohesion in distributed teams. Procedures like short sprint cycles
and frequent short meetings like daily standups, plannings and retrospectives were mentioned as
adjuvant reasons.
The importance of communication was significant, and the topic came up in various situations
and forms during the interviews. Modern technology in the form of a wide variety of text, audio
or video communication tools, is nowadays providing enough flexibility and convenience to
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create a constant stream of communication between remote team members. The biggest identified
obstacles are located in the areas of communication. One aspect is infrastructural issues like
unreliable tools, hardware or unstable internet connections. Another surprising result was that
while cultural differences posed no problem at all but were on the contrary welcomed by all
experts, different native languages and unequal language abilities are possible pitfalls that
reportedly can impede communication between remote team members.
An essential distinction between far and near distributed teams is the fact that the teams
investigated in this paper had the characteristic of being able to gather team members in one place
within reasonable costs. Although all teams were generally set up for remote collaboration, they
still chose to co-locate the whole team in one location regularly. Such collective situations are
used to deal with complex topics like architecture planning or retrospective meetings.
Furthermore, regular face-to-face contact builds and fosters a team spirit and interpersonal
relationships.
5.1 RECOMMENDATIONS
The discussion of the research propositions and answering the research questions in the previous
section summarised four challenges and four benefits of agile methods in distributed teams with
low spatial and temporal distance. Based on those findings the authors make the following seven
proposals derived from the examined teams to improve the effectiveness of distributed agile
teams further:
#1 Use practices and tools to radiate information: Various agile practices are well suited to not
only produce source code but also to foster communication and spread information. Tools like
issue trackers or digital boards furthermore can serve as information radiators. Pair programming
is a valuable practice to share knowledge between different locations when remote team
colleagues collaborate. Text-based code reviews or the usage of pull-requests are practices that as
a side effect communicate information and can update colleagues about progress.
#2 Co-locate the team regularly: Collective activities when being co-located are necessary to
build and maintain a successful team. The interviewed experts therefore all mentioned the
importance of bringing the team together frequently. Especially within the boundaries of a low
geographical distance this is possible within reasonable time and costs.
#3 Provide channels and encourage communication: Teams need to have the possibility to
communicate whenever they want, getting in touch with a remote colleague has to be as easy as
possible. Therefore, good communication infrastructure like microphones, speakers, TV-screens
or headphones as well as software tools is crucial.
“That [bad quality of remote communication tools] is the reason why infrastructure is so
important and is an aspect where you must not skimp. Also, provide the team with multiple
communication channels so they can choose which suits them best.” (Scrum Master, Eta)
#4 Plan for communication: Spreading information in distributed teams does not happen as
naturally as in co-located situations, informal and personal communication is often neglected.
Therefore, it is advisable to schedule dedicated communication opportunities and meetings. This
also applies to more informal topics, Theta, for example, reported they once clinked glasses
virtually in a video conference. Virtual activities like shared coffee breaks or collective lunchtime
over video chats can increase otherwise lacking informal communication.
#5 Have alternative communication strategies prepared: When distributed teams
communicate via audio or video channels these channels are error-prone, a fragile internet
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connection, software or hardware defects are impeding communication. Therefore, it is advisable
to have backup routines like for example usage of text-based channels, alternative internet access,
telephone lines and general standby hardware.
#6 Adapt the process model: Most agile process models are intended for co-located teams and
build on direct face-to-face communication. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt processes and
practices to a distributed situation and also regularly review and improve them. One example
would be doing practices that normally are done in a synchronous communication situation
asynchronously (like asynchronously performed standup meetings in a text chat or code reviews
that are discussed via text comments).
#7 Stick to the defined processes and practices: Team members should be able to rely on
established processes. When a reoccurring meeting is scheduled at a specific date, this date
should be steady. Re-scheduling on short notice may be more problematic since all remote team
members have to be notified.
5.2 FUTURE WORK
In 2016, around 25 per cent of German software engineers have experience with working at least
part-time remotely [2] and there is no indication that this number will decrease anytime soon. Due
to the nature of empirical qualitative research, our resulting arguments and findings within the
defined boundaries could be evaluated in a quantitative study to gather further insights and also
strengthen the findings or suggest alterations. Our seven recommendations could be subject to
follow-up studies focusing on their in-depth evaluation based on larger empirical data sets.
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AUTHORS
Manuel Stadler received his master’s degree in software engineering at the Vienna University of
Technology in 2016. His research interests focus on software engineering processes and distributed
collaboration in software development teams. He has several years of IT industry experience as a Software
Engineer as well as Project- and Product Manager.
Raoul Vallon is a postdoctoral researcher at Vienna University of Technology, where he leads the AMMA
(Amazing Makers) work group on empirical software engineering at the Research Group for Industrial
Software (INSO). In 2014 he was a visiting researcher at Professor Larry Leifer’s Center for Design
Research at Stanford University. Finishing in 2016, he developed the ADAPT (Agile Distributed Adaptable
Process Toolkit) framework as part of his PhD research. He also has several years experience working in
industry as a software engineer and manager.
Martin Pazderka is a Senior Lecturer at Research Group for Industrial Software (INSO) at the Vienna
University of Technology. His research interests are project management, organisational maturity models,
and social dynamics in software engineering teams. He has 20+ years of IT industry experience in various
roles ranging from IT-Architect to Project and Program Manager, has successfully delivered complex
international projects for several Fortune 500 clients, and contributed to PMI's OPM3 standard.
Thomas Grechenig is a senior architect in large IT systems and nation-wide IT-infrastructures. He is a
professor for industrial software engineering and the head of the Research Group for Industrial Software
(INSO) at the Vienna University of Technology. He and his teams have planned, designed, and built
several large-scale IT solutions, e.g. in health, railway systems or public transport applications. In science
and research the focus of interest goes towards enhancing the stability and fine-tuning of the IT-mass-
concept in all its critical sectors (usability, security, IT-infrastructure, performance, integration and
interoperability).