Using Agile Practices to Solve Global Software Development Problems - A Case Study

Although challenges in Global Software Development (GSD)are now well known, companies are still looking for workable solutions to issues relating to poor communication, lack of control, low staff morale, and ambiguous requirements, all of which are prevalent in distributed development settings. Solutions offered are often difficult to implement, are disparate, and can be theoretical rather than practical. We conducted a case study with a GSD company, currently using a plan driven approach to development, and uncovered many GSD problems. We mapped each problem to solutions known to work in Agile development settings. Although work has been undertaken in Agile for GSD, we look to the literature to identify practices that specifically address challenges for organisations already engaged in GSD, who are open to moving from a plan-driven/waterfall development process to a more agile approach. Many challenges are addressed by Agile practices, for example requirements ambiguity, need for autonomy, or unpredictable customer expectations. We hypothesise that many GSD problems can be solved by organisations taking an agile approach to their development.