Plan-Driven Approaches Are Alive and Kicking in Agile Global Software Development

Marcelo Marinho, John Noll, Ita Richardson, Sarah Beecham

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Background: Agile methods are no longer restricted to small projects and co-located teams. The last decade has seen the spread of agile into large scale, distributed and regulated domains. Many case studies show successful agile adoption in GSD, however, taken as a whole, it remains unclear how widespread this trend is, and what form the agile adoption takes in a global software development (GSD) setting. Aims: Our objective is to gain a deeper understanding of how organisations adopt agile development methods in distributed settings. Specifically we aim to plot the current development process landscape in GSD. Method: We analyse industrial survey data from 33 different countries collected as part of the HELENA project that explored the wider use of hybrid development approaches in software development. We extract and analyse the results of 263 surveys completed by participants involved in globally distributed projects. Results: In our sample, 72% of globally distributed projects implement a mix of both agile and traditional approaches (termed 'hybrid'). 25% of GSD projects are predominantly agile, with only very few (2%) opting for traditional approaches. GSD projects that used only agile methods tended to be very large. Conclusions: Globally Distributed Software Development (and project size) is not a barrier to adopting agile practices. Yet, to facilitate project coordination and general project management, many adopt traditional approaches, resulting in a hybrid approach that follows defined rules.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 13th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2019
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
ISBN (Electronic)9781728129686
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sep 2019
Event13th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2019 - Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, Brazil
Duration: 19 Sep 201920 Sep 2019

Publication series

NameInternational Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement
Volume2019-Septemer
ISSN (Print)1949-3770
ISSN (Electronic)1949-3789

Conference

Conference13th ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, ESEM 2019
Country/TerritoryBrazil
CityPorto de Galinhas, Pernambuco
Period19/09/1920/09/19

Keywords

  • Agile software development
  • Global Software Development
  • GSD
  • hybrid development approaches
  • software process

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